


a mad venture best left to the young

by elizajane



Series: wandering home [3]
Category: Shetland (TV)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Family Fluff, Family Issues, Holidays, Lightly Beta Read, M/M, Masturbation, Morning Cuddles, Phone Calls & Telephones, Public Display of Affection, Sex Toys, airport goodbyes, airport reunions, parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-06-11 18:01:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15321153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: Jimmy almost forgets that the world doesn't already know.





	1. telling cassie

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing these little scenelets for my wife in email, lightly editing, and posting them. So I may end up going back over them and revising slightly for continuity, etc., as I go (as I have done before with post-as-you-go series like this).
> 
> [Work initially titled "telling cassie" (the title of chapter one). Updated 7/17/2018.]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy realizes with a flush of guilt that one of them (or both of them) should probably tell Cassie.

During the first few days of being with Duncan in this altered way, Jimmy is so absorbed in the rightness of it that he doesn’t think to share the news with anyone. He feels at home in his body, in his house, with Duncan in his bed, so deeply that it doesn’t feel _new_. He almost forgets that the world doesn’t already know.

On the fourth morning of waking up together, Jimmy returns to consciousness pressed along the back of Duncan's naked, sleeping form and realizes with a flush of guilt that one of them (or both of them) should probably tell Cassie. She’s likely worked it out already. But even if she has, he knows they should actually tell her outright so she doesn’t think they’re trying to hide it from her.  He’s been careful all along to be casually open with her about the fact that not all of his relationships have been with women; Duncan has spoken not only of women but also the men he's been with over the years. But Jimmy knows there’s a difference between knowing your parents’ relationship history and learning about their relationship present.

He smooths his hand over Duncan’s shoulder, running a thumb along the three black lines: Fran, Cassie, Jimmy. He remembers when Duncan told him what the lines meant, and when he’d asked permission -- over a decade now -- to add the third line. Duncan had broached the subject almost shyly, with a defiant set to his jaw the only indication of how much it really meant to him. Jimmy hadn’t fully understood at the time why anyone would get permanent ink on their bodies -- but he’d said yes because he couldn’t say no, not to the seductive idea that Duncan thought of Jimmy as an indelible part of his family.

This morning, Jimmy traces the lines with the pad of his thumb, then bends to kiss the spot where his thumb has just passed over. Then he twists in the bed -- Duncan shifting restlessly and murmuring in his sleep -- and reaches to palm his mobile off the nightstand.

There are already a string of new texts from Cassie waiting: A selfie of her and Edison in their flat, lots of heart emojis. He smiles, then shifts his shoulder so he can type one-handed.

 _So I heard you told Duncan I wasn’t dating Asha._ He begins.

He pauses for a moment to see if Cassie is on her phone. Then realizes it’s two hours earlier in São Paulo and she is likely still asleep.

_Thank you. I should have said something to him sooner._

He hesitates. What to say? _Duncan and I are..._ dating? in a relationship? boyfriends? "Partners" feels closest to the truth: Without even knowing that’s what they were doing, they’d skipped straight over any more casual period of getting to know one another years ago. It feels ridiculous to tell a daughter whom they raised together as if he’s dating someone new.

Beside him, Duncan stirs. Then rolls over to snuggle in to curl of Jimmy’s arm and shoulder.  Jimmy presses a kiss to Duncan’s forehead. Duncan makes a querying sound in his throat.

“I’m just texting Cassie,” he says.

Duncan murmurs an assent and presses closer, seeming to subside back into sleep. Jimmy drops his phone to his chest and closes his eyes, feeling the already familiar weight of Duncan on his arm and chest. He thinks about what it might have been like to have this years earlier; to have this be an early morning exchange about who would make breakfast or drive Cassie to school.

“We should tell her, aye?” Duncan says, softly but clearly, without opening his eyes.

Jimmy huffs a laugh. “So you _are_ a mind-reader. I was just thinking the same.”

“Is this going to be like the time you tried to get _me_ to give her the if-you’re-going-to-have-sex-use-protection talk?” Duncan pokes Jimmy in the belly with his finger.

“If I recall,” Jimmy points out, “I was wildly unsuccessful.”

Duncan pats him on the chest. “You always have been the more responsible parent.”

Jimmy rolls his eyes, an unsuccessful rejoinder since he still has his eyes closed, and then opens them as he picks his phone back up. “Fine, then. But I’m adding you to the text.”

 _Duncan just woke up and says I should have said something sooner too,_ he types. _He’s not using your bedroom any longer._

He drops his phone back of the bed and rolls Duncan onto his back so Jimmy can prop himself up on one elbow and look down at ... his lover? friend? partner? He finds himself thinking of the word _husband,_ a word he has only ever applied to himself in relation to Fran. When had he stopped thinking of himself as _her_ husband? Years after her death. But he hasn’t imagined himself … he’s had no relationship since that one that reached the point where _husband?_  was a question in his mind.

Except, yes: Here he is looking down at Duncan’s slightly grumpy morning face, with it's shadows of sleep and tangled hair and overnight stubble, and no other word feels more appropriate.

He can’t say it, though. Perhaps he should be brave enough. But he opens his mouth to say...what. _Will you marry me?_ It’s been less than a week (it’s been eleven years). He doesn’t know how to make those two things make sense anywhere but in his head.

Duncan reaches up with a hand and draws his thumb across Jimmy’s forehead. “My worrier,” he says, fondly. “She will forgive us.”

“You think we're doing something to forgive?”

Duncan snorts. “Not _now_ we aren’t. I meant she’ll forgive us for taking this long to sort ourselves out.”

Jimmy doesn’t have words ready to hand to say what he’s feeling in this moment. But it’s comforting to realize neither Duncan nor Cassie mind that about him. He leans down to press a light kiss to Duncan’s lips. During the past few days they have enjoyed many different kinds of kisses; this is a soft, leisurely one with no intent behind it apart from enjoying time with one another before the alarm goes off and Jimmy has to start thinking about getting ready for the day’s work.

Duncan slips a warm hand behind Jimmy’s head, fingers curling in the hair at the nape of Jimmy’s neck. Whispers of breath pass between them. Jimmy traces his tongue along Duncan’s chapped lower lip, Duncan responds by pushing through Jimmy’s parted lips into his mouth, tasting, teasing. Jimmy pulls back just enough to kiss his way gently across Duncan’s stubbled skin to the soft sweetness behind his ear. Duncan sweeps his hand down the plane of Jimmy’s shoulder, fingers tickling along Jimmy's spine, until he reaches the rise of Jimmy's bottom and thigh, tugging him closer.

“Ah, love,” Jimmy starts.

“I know,” Duncan agrees, soft. They rock together once, twice, gestures of what has been and will be shared. This is not the time, even as Jimmy feels them both twitch with interest, feels desire pool warm and hopeful, at the edges where one body gives way to another.

“How am I going to manage three weeks without you, sweetheart?” Duncan’s touring schedule has never loomed so large in his consciousness.

Duncan chuckles, a deep, rich sound. “Mmm. Take some of that time you never take and come with me.”

He considers it, stroking his hand down Duncan's flank. It has the appeal of anonymity. Of trying on this new life as Duncan's partner away from prying island eyes. He knows half the station has a betting pool going on how long before or after Duncan moved in they began fucking. But he still shies away from the image of he and Duncan holding hands on the high street where one of the beat constables might see. Let alone bringing Duncan as his plus one to the next office Christmas party. He and Duncan haven't talked about this, yet, in so many words -- but he feels shame at even the slightest hesitation.

He pulls back from Duncan's body far enough so that he can read Duncan's face without squinting. “Once we’ve talked to Cassie I should say something to Rhona. I’ll ask about taking some time at the end of your tour.”

Something flickers across Duncan's face, one of those looks that even after all this time Jimmy isn't sure how to parse. “Is it okay that I tell Rhona?” He smooths his palm in slow, gentle circles against Duncan's hip.

Duncan shakes his head minutely against the pillow, but it's a dismissal of shadows not a rejection of telling Rhona their relationship has changed. "Just thinking about how I used to wonder who'd replace me as your emergency contact."

That requires another kiss, because Jimmy feels the sharp regret that Duncan worried for a single moment about being replaced as that first call in a crisis. The fact that Jimmy had always assumed -- even when dating someone -- that Duncan would always be that person in his life should have clarified things long before this.

"There was never any competition," he whispers fiercely against Duncan's mouth.

"Good," is Duncan's only reply.


	2. coffee with rhona

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He meets Rhona for a coffee three days later.

He meets Rhona for a coffee three days later.

“Duncan and I…” he begins, after they’ve gone over her tidy bullet-pointed agenda and turned to more casual conversation. “We were thinking of taking a bit of a holiday.”

Her lips twitch, a satisfied smile that mostly appears in her eyes. He’s known her long enough to take this for the true sign of satisfaction that it is. "Good for you," is all she says. "Sandy’s ready to take charge for a bit?"

“Yes ma’am,” Jimmy says, a knot he hadn't realized was wound so tight coming undone in his chest. “Duncan has a tour in the Grampions these next three weeks. I’m hoping to meet him in Aberdeen in a fortnight. I know it’s short notice but --”

Rhona rolls her eyes. “And when was the last time you took a proper holiday, Jimmy? I think they’ll survive without you. If I order you to go would that make it easier?”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes. “I’ll talk to Sandy today and put in for the time.”

“See that you do,” Rhona returns. They sit in peaceful silence for perhaps half a minute, looking out across the busy square off which the Costa sits. Mid-morning on a summer weekday means mums -- and a few dads -- pushing babies and toddlers in prams, teenagers out of school for the summer skiving off with their mates. Delivery men and women in and out of their vans and office workers moving to and fro on one errand or another.

“I’m happy for you," Rhona said, finally. “You and Duncan. I’ve wondered --” she shakes her head. “Not that it’s my business. But I’m glad.”

Jimmy blinks, aware of -- and a bit outraged about, the sudden threat of tears. “I am too,” he says. “Thank you.”

He wonders, suddenly, how many of these conversations Rhona has had -- both on her side of the table and his. He remembers when he’d first transferred in, how the placement of Phyllis’ photograph on Rhona’s desk made it impossible for anyone observant to ignore. Over the following weeks they had done the familiar dance: A pronoun here, a gay bar in Glasgow there. When Rhona spoke of Phyllis’ wee nephew Jimmy told a story about Cassie’s first Pride. All the things you learned to say and do to remind yourself and the other person you weren’t slowly going mad in a world full of straight people. Which promotion, he wonders, had been the one that gave her enough security to put that photograph (or one like it) on her desk? Who was the first colleague she had come out to, and when? Who had been her first girlfriend? When had she told her parents, and how had they responded? He knows he could ask her, and he knows she will have those stories ready to hand. Because they all had those stories -- variations on a theme -- tucked away for safekeeping.

He remembers, shivering despite the hot latte cradled in his hands, that he doesn’t (yet) know all of Duncan’s stories. Not even most of them. Duncan rarely talks about his childhood and youth, and the stories he tells have the air of careful selection. Not for the first time, Jimmy finds himself wondering about the circumstances under which Duncan left home.

He thinks of his own coming out to his parents, just over twenty years ago. It had been the early Nineties and -- to his knowledge -- he hadn’t known a single gay, lesbian, or otherwise queer person until leaving Fair Isle for university. He’d come back to Shetland for the summer between his first and second years newly righteous and ready to come out … only to lose his nerve in the familiar (and sometimes stifling) setting of the community where he’d grown up. Where he knew that if he so much as whispered the words _I’ve fallen in love with a man_ on an otherwise deserted hillside everyone on the whole island would know by sunset that evening.

So he’d gone back to university that fall, nursing a crush on Rickie and still not out to his parents or anyone else on Shetland. During his second year, the crush blossomed into an actual on-again, off-again, on-again relationship that, in retrospect, Jimmy had been much more invested in than Rickie. Which had led to the promise of a flat in Dundee that turned out to be a series of couches to crash on and ended when Jimmy had had enough and bought himself a bus ticket to Aberdeen and a one-way fare on the next ferry to Lerwick. It all tumbled out in explanation to his parents when he turned up with his rucksack and had been forced to admit that he’d invented a girlfriend and a summer job in Dundee when in reality there had been a boyfriend and he’d been working the fryers at a little tourist chippy down by the wharf for £2.60 an hour.

In retrospect, it had been a poor moment, all around, to introduce his parents to the fact he was bisexual. His mother had been terrified he would die of AIDS and wept through most of the horrible conversation. He father sat, jaw clenched, and said all the right things about family and not judging God’s creations, and only caring that Jimmy didn’t go through life alone -- a clear reference to his parent’s own happy marriage, with a heavy emphasis on _marriage_. And Jimmy had been angry: At himself, at his ex-boyfriend, at his parents for questioning his ability to take care of himself (angry at them in part because _he_ no longer trusted his ability to take care of himself). It had been humiliating in the extreme.

He hasn’t told them (he knows eventually he will have to) about Duncan. And that adolescent memory is part of what's stopping him.

Telling Rhona, by contrast, feels like moving into the future rather than revisiting the past. He smiles into the last mouthful of coffee and catches Rhona’s eye. She smiles back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Research! 
> 
> I learned today that [Shetland LGBT](https://twitter.com/ShetlandLGBT) exists and that is a wonderful thing.
> 
> The National Minimum Wage Act of 1998 set the minimum wage for 18-to-21 year olds in Scotland at £3.00. I rounded down a bit, given Jimmy would have been working at the fish-and-chips shop a few years earlier.


	3. showing the pub, part one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy stops by the pub on his way home from work that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter today, since I only had my lunch hour to revise and post. Part two tomorrow!
> 
> Content note: Use of a homophobic slur in a brief flashback to Jimmy's university days.

Jimmy stops by the pub on his way home from work that night. Duncan’s been picking up odd jobs around the islands, filling in here for a mate who’s down with the 'flu, filling in there for another whose drummer cancelled at the last minute. Tonight he’s on a tiny stage at the back of the main room with Oona and Andy on fiddle, taking turns at the mic.

Jimmy catches Duncan’s eye from the bar, then sits nursing his beer making small talk with Euan until the set is over. The ale is just enough to take the edge off the way it feels newly awkward to be sitting here. Never mind that he’s been listening to Duncan make music in pubs for almost as many days as he’s known him. Never mind that he knows a good quarter of the patrons in the room by name, is on a first-name basis with the barkeep. Tonight, he feels conspicuous.

At the end of their set, followed by a smattering of applause and shots of approval from the late-evening crowd, Duncan slides onto the empty bar stool beside Jimmy. Jimmy has a split second to decide whether to lean in or keep a friendly distance between them. He thinks of Rhona’s quiet understanding and leans in.

Duncan clearly isn’t expecting the kiss, but that doesn’t stop him from opening his mouth against Jimmy's in welcome. He tastes of Guinness and chicken curry pie and sweat from the long evening in a crowded pub. Jimmy runs the tip of his tongue along Duncan’s lower lip, feeling the smile before he pulls back far enough to see it.

Duncan says nothing but his eyes sparkle with happiness. Euan says nothing, but pushes a fresh round of drinks into their hands and returns a moment later with Jimmy's order of chips hot from the fryer.

It feels absurdly normal and Jimmy almost spares a moment’s irritation that the occasion -- the first time he's kissed Duncan in public -- has gone by with no one but the two of them to find it remarkable. _Dad_ , he can hear Cassie saying, with a roll of her eyes.

So maybe he’s just old, but it still feels like he's getting away with someone, kissing another man in a public place that isn't a gay bar, a Pride march, a protest. A part if him is still tensed against the hostility, the shadow of violence, that he remembers from being a queer seventeen-year-old at uni. How he’d dared to kiss Rickie in the quad one spring day and had been subject to jeers, shouts of “faggot!” from the residence windows above. Sure, he’d thrown up a hand -- mouth still occupied -- in the time-honored gesture of _fuck right the hell off_. But he’d also felt Rickie tense under his touch, noticed how he’d flinched back, understood from the look in Rickie’'s face that they wouldn’t be risking such attention again.

A lot has changed in three decades.

Duncan leans companionably against Jimmy’s shoulder as he sucks the head off his fresh pint of Guinness. Jimmy, newly aware of what Duncan is doing with lips and tongue and soft inhalations, feels his cheeks color at the sight. He distracts himself, for a moment or two, with the bottle of vinegar. And then -- the kiss having gone so well -- slips a hand beneath the lip of the bar and rests his palm on Duncan’s knee.


	4. showing the pub, part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It suddenly dawns on Jimmy to worry that he’s probably a _terrible_ , boring traveling companion. “Do I need to be prepared for...clubbing? Or something?”

“What do I pack for a holiday to Aberdeen, anyway?” Jimmy asks. It’s the first proper grown-up holiday he’s taken since Fran’s death. And the first holiday he and Duncan will have taken together without Cassie. Sure, he’d taken time off work when Cassie was away at school but mostly spent it with his parents on Fair Isle, or puttering around home. It suddenly dawns on him to worry that he’s probably a _terrible_ , boring traveling companion.

“Do I need to be prepared for...clubbing? Or something?”

Duncan snorts, affectionately. “Not that I’d object to seeing you in skinny jeans but --”

“Yeah, yeah, I know I’m pathetic." Jimmy shakes his head.

Duncan steals another chip from the basket and eats it in meditative silence. “After working three weeks straight through, the last thing I’ll be doing is looking to go anywhere there’s music and a crowd amped up on club drugs, cheap drink, and pheromones. I usually go hide in the nearest art gallery or botanic garden. There’s nice one up at the uni.”

Jimmy thinks back to the holidays they took with Cassie, and is suddenly embarrassed that he had always assumed the gardens and museums Duncan found for them to explore were for her benefit -- that, left to his own devices, he’d be spending his time doing something more exciting that shepherding his daughter and her step dad around the V & A, out for an ice cream, and back to the hotel before dark.

“So your saying I ought to bring my reading glasses and a picnic blanket.” Somewhere in the crawl space above the kitchen was a box with the old plaid his mother had given him and Fran as a wedding present. It has seen many a sandy beach and grassy hillside, though not for a few seasons now.

Duncan gave him an odd look over the rim of his glass. “I’m saying we’ll do what pleases us for a fortnight. If you decide you’d like to find a nightclub it’s Aberdeen not the arctic circle. We can find you something with the the right amount of flash to blend in.”

“Oi! Hunter!” There’s a shout from Andy the back of the room and Duncan takes a final swig of Guinness before standing. “You staying?” He leans over Jimmy’s shoulder for another kiss.

“I’ll stay,” Jimmy gestures to his drink and the food. He hadn’t planned to stay -- he’s been up since shortly after dawn -- but now that he’s here he can’t bear the thought of leaving the lights and the murmur of conversation and music and _Duncan_. Even if leaving would mean an hour or two more of sleep before the alarm on his mobile goes off in the morning. He reaches up to catch Duncan’s fingers for a squeeze as Duncan turns back to the band. It’s fleeting, only half-successful contact. But it’s still meaningful.

He’s spotted three customers so far, this evening, who’ve watched them with critical faces. An older woman who finished her dinner and left not long after he and Duncan had kissed, and two lads who moved down the bar once it became clear Jimmy and Duncan were a couple. Euan, Jimmy notes, hasn’t technically stopped serving them -- but they’re having to call him over, and even then he takes his own sweet time.

Jimmy swivels on his barstool and watches Duncan weave his way through the maze of occupied tables and chairs to the far corner, exchange a few words and a nod with the Andy and Oona, then take a seat with one of his bodhrán and a tipper in hand. Begin the low, rhythmic shuff and rap, shuff and rap of a beat that will carry on like a steady rain under the bright dance of the fiddles. There’s a smattering of applause and shouts of approval from around the room.  

As the first tune slides into a second, then shifts to a third, Jimmy allows it to become a warm, vibrant backdrop of sound and pulls out his mobile. These are familiar pieces; he’s been hearing them since childhood -- probably from the womb -- and there’s something comforting about knowing that Duncan is playing them. Like being read a bedtime story from childhood. He lets the assurance that Duncan is near wash away the day’s tension and flicks with only half his attention through his texts, email, social media account. His mother has sent him a Facebook message asking after Cassie and wanting to know if he might be free Tuesday next for lunch. She’ll be in town for a weavers guild meeting. He confirms with the usual provisos about police emergencies, then hesitates.

He’s aware that of all the relationship conversations he and Duncan have before them, the one with his parents is the one his is least looking forward to. The seventeen-year-old he once was is lobbying internally to never reopen the subject. The seventeen-year-old has been so successful, in fact, that Jimmy has managed to avoid direct discussion of his sexual and romantic life with his parents since he returned to Shetland with Cassie (and Duncan, though he hadn’t truly realized what that meant at the time). Not that his mother never tried to put him in front of eligible Shetland lasses. But he’d cut her off at the pass a few times and she’s finally given up making suggestions.

He wonders, not for the first time, if the reason Duncan and his parents don’t get on is because his parents have never understood whether or how to think of him as part of the family. Maybe this will actually make it easier.They have a script for widowers and second marriages.

He sighs. A problem for another day, and a clearer head.

* * *

The band packs up just after midnight and perhaps, Jimmy thinks as he stifles a yawn, he should just switch to second shift on a permanent basis so at least his non-emergency work life is more in sync with Duncan’s. He locks up his own car in the carpark overnight and Duncan drives them home. This time, when his hand drifts from the gearshift to Jimmy’s thigh he leaves it there and Jimmy covers it over with his own palm.

"Thank you for coming by," Duncan says. “I know it made for a long day.”

“Had to eat sometime,”Jimmy responds, tipping his head back against the car seat and closing his eyes. “Much nicer to be where you are than in an empty house.”

“Am I going to have to leave you dinners-for-one in the freezer when I fly out next week?” In the dark, Duncan sounds amused as he signals at a deserted traffic light and turns left onto the last stretch of country road before home.

“Mmm,” Jimmy smiles. “Mum always refused to do that. When she was away for work, my Da and I just fended for ourselves. Lots of eggy bread and fish and chips.”

Duncan snorts as he turns the wheel to pull into the drive. The last of the summer twilight is fading and they’ll have a pleasant few hours of darkness before the dawn returns. Jimmy looks forward to falling asleep with Duncan limpet-like across his chest, head tucked under Jimmy’s chin. It had been so many years since Jimmy had shared -- properly; hotels and holiday accommodations didn’t count -- his bed with another human being that for the first few nights they woke each other up rolling over; Struggled over the duvet until a drowsy armistice was reached; kept each other awake through the sheer delight of being together. Now, barely a week later, he doesn’t know how he slept alone for so many years. It had been so utterly lonely. So lonely that for much of that time he’d hidden the pain even from himself.

To think that there were days during Cassie's adolescence when he had dreamed (albeit briefly) of the solitude that was a few days without responsibility for or to any other human being. Now he’ll be counting down the days until Aberdeen. He won’t tell Duncan, but he’s already thinking about just rolling himself up in a blanket on the sofa. Perhaps with a programme on in the background, just to offset the emptiness of the cottage. Perhaps one of Duncan’s early CDs.

* * *

“I haven't asked, and now likely isn't the time,” he says once they’ve brushed their teeth and arranged themselves comfortably in bed, preparatory to sleep -- Duncan wrapped around Jimmy just as Jimmy had anticipated -- "but is there anyone besides Cassie _you_ want to know? About us?"

Duncan doesn't have a boss, and Jimmy assumes that Duncan's circle of musician friends will learn catch as catch can -- beginning with Oona and Andy this evening. If musicians gossip at anything like the rate of Shetlanders or the Scottish police, Andy and Oona are the only two Duncan will have to formally introduce Jimmy to as “my partner.” Everyone else will just _know._

What Jimmy really means when he says “anyone besides Cassie” is the anyones that make up Duncan's family. And Duncan's stillness indicates he understands the question. He is quiet long enough gives it even odds he's fallen asleep. But eventually he says. "My sister Shelley follows my page on Facebook. I'll think about it."

Jimmy pulls him closer and presses a kiss to his forehead. "Whatever you need, love," he says softly into the dark. And together they drift off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first two works in this series were already complete when I started revising/posting. This one's a bit more extemporaneous -- and I'm nearing the end of what I already have in a draft one version. So chapters might be a bit slower in coming along. I promise not to leave characters mid-crisis (I'm not much for crisis anyway, at least the traumatic kinds). 
> 
> I spent a year at the University of Aberdeen reading history back in 2003-2004. The [Cruickshank Botanic Garden](https://www.abdn.ac.uk/botanic-garden/) was a lovely oasis. My apologies for any out-of-date references as we move forward.


	5. at lerwick airport

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duncan’s mobile had woken them with the Clash at half four.

Without either of them articulating the need for it, Jimmy turns into the carpark rather than pull up to drop-off point before the airport entrance.

Duncan’s mobile had woken them with the Clash at half four. An agonizing hour to wake, wash, and down a hurried cup of coffee before stowing the last few things in his carryall and climbing into the passenger seat of Jimmy’s car so that Jimmy could drive him to the airport. In the forefront of Duncan’s mind are the tasks of the day ahead: clearing security, boarding his flight, landing in Aberdeen, securing the rental car, his drive up the coast to Fraserburgh, checking in at his lodgings, the inevitable adjustments of a first night playing in any new venue. The rest of the group -- Geoff, Annie, and Sky -- are meeting him there, at their first gig, since they’re based out of Inverness. He’d been looking forward to spending a few weeks with them, _before_. It’s a family band, the siblings easy to work with, and he’s known them since they were fresh-faced adolescents just starting out on the festival circuit. He still thinks of them as “kids” though all of them are older than Cassie, and Geoff and Annie now have two of their own. It had been an easy yes, back in the depths of winter, when Arden had emailed to ask would he sub in for her during the final weeks of her pregnancy and first weeks of new parenthood. Now he feels as if he’s already impatiently counting down the days until Jimmy meets him in Aberdeen.

It’s going to be a long, long three weeks if he gives in to homesickness before the airplane wheels leave the runway.

As Jimmy pulls into a parking spot and turns off the engine, Duncan pulls his hand back from where it’s been resting, idle, on Jimmy’s thigh and releases his safety belt, pushing open the car door to haul himself out and go ‘round to the boot for his luggage. Jimmy locks the car from the keyfob and comes around to help him, even though Duncan travels light: a carry-on and his instrument case.

“Want me to --?” Jimmy holds out a hand. Duncan -- quashing his first impulse to say he’s got it, that he’s done this hundreds of times -- passes over the rucksack because it’s clear Jimmy needs something to justify his continued presence here. Every other time they’ve done this it’s been a quick pause at the curb, airport security hovering to ensure no one lingers too long, a perfunctory exchange of goodbyes. But that feels inadequate now. Duncan thinks of last Friday, when Jimmy had come to the pub after work, had pressed such an unexpected kiss to Duncan’s lips, had made it clear Duncan was his. It had mattered to Duncan, that moment, much more than he ever would have anticipated. He hadn’t realized, until Jimmy had leaned in for that kiss, that a part of his heart had reserved itself to cope with a long, slow path to being visibly queer. Had anticipated that Jimmy’s decades of moving through the world as a widower with a daughter -- as someone who could allow the presumption of heterosexuality stand when he didn’t want the scrutiny -- would take time to unravel and reweave into the new and more complicated dance of being seen. But instead, there was Jimmy: relaxed at the bar, mouth soft and inviting, hand on Duncan’s thigh as if he’s always been allowed to rest it there. Jimmy leaning against him as if he were about to lay his head on Duncan’s shoulder. Jimmy, lingering as the bar closed and the last of the patrons were nudged out the door, chatting with Euan, and eventually drifting over to where Duncan, Oona, and Andy were packing up. Jimm presseing a warm hand to the small of Duncan’s back as he’d stuck out his other hand in greeting, first to Andy and then to Oona.

“Andy, good to see you again; Oona, that was a lovely ‘Salley Gardens.’”

“Oona Roberts,” Duncan had said by way of introductions. “Oona, my partner Jimmy.” The hand at his back was making him bold. He’d been rewarded by the slide of that hand around to his waist, pulling him in against Jimmy’s side as Jimmy shook Oona’s hand.

“It’s a pleasure; thank you,” Oona had smiled. It had been that simple.

Thinking of that moment, now, as the two of them walk across the carpark to the airport entrence, Duncan lets the back of his hand brush against the back of Jimmy’s, their fingers briefly tangling, then untangling, as their strides match and then stutter back out of alignment. Jimmy's fingers catch, and hold, and there they are hand-in-hand in the light of dawn.

* * *

Inside, when Duncan’s finished at the ticket counter, he returns to where Jimmy is waiting by the bank of screens that announce the morning's departures and arrivals

“I’ll text when I’m on the ground,” he says. Both he and Cassie have long ago learned that Jimmy needs to know. “And when I’m off the road in Fraserburgh.”

“Thank you,” Jimmy slides the rucksack down off his shoulder and passes it over.

There’s an awkward pause as they look at one another. Duncan has always hated this moment of any goodbye. He slides a hand up Jimmy’s chest, thinking how the last time he touched Jimmy just there -- that morning, in the shower -- there had been no clothing between him and Jimmy's warm, inviting skin. He curls his fingers around the back of Jimmy’s neck to steady himself as he pushes up the inch or two needed to reach Jimmy’s mouth for a kiss.

“See you in Aberdeen,” he whispers, for just the two of them to hear as the airport bustle eddies around them.

“In Aberdeen,” Jimmy agrees, equally soft, then sqeezes Duncan’s hand and lets him go.

* * *

Duncan joins the security queue, his body protesting at the hour and lack of a second cup of coffee this side of the security scanners. He can't stop himself from looking over his shoulder at Jimmy's retreating back, running the tip of his tongue against his own lips as if to seal in the lingering taste of Jimmy against the three weeks when touch and taste will be impossible. He's already mourning the distance between them, even as he thinks about the possibilities of his single guesthouse room in Fraserburgh and the speaker function on his mobile phone. He shivers as Jimmy cuts across to the sliding glass doors and disappears out into the carpark.

The queue has moved up while he lingered to watch Jimmy depart, and he shuffles forward another few paces to close the gap before someone else cuts in front. He's directly behind a businessman -- a lawyer type he doesn't care for the look of -- complaining loudly into his mobile about his travel arrangements. Duncan feels a deep, instinctive sympathy for whomever is on the other end of the line. To distract himself he pulls his mobile out. Another few shuffling paces.

 _missing you already_ he texts Jimmy.

There's a text from Cassie waiting, in the Portuguese she's talked him into learning with her. They're doing DuoLingo together but he's fallen behind in the past week for ... reasons. He thinks she is asking him if his morning coffee was good.

 _era muito pequeno_ he types back. _it was very small._ He can't remember if he should know the way to say _not enough_.

He snaps a photo of the bank of security scanners, then hits send on the mobile screen just before it's his turn to drop everything from his pockets into the bin and send it down the conveyor belt. On the other side of the scanners he gets the all-clear from uniformed security and collects his effects. His morning gets an instant boost when he notices that the suit on the mobile has been pulled aside for an additional pat-down, and is now arguing with the security officials in a way that will likely make the additional screening take even more of his time. Whistling to himself, Duncan slips his shoes back on and procures a terrible Americano from the coffee kiosk in the terminal. Coffee in hand, he joins the loosely-affiliated group of passengers -- all likely waiting for the 7:13 to Aberdeen -- who have yet to establish a formal queue at the gate. He takes a sip of the hot coffee, grimacing at the taste, and pulls his mobile back out to text Jimmy. 

 _ **missing you already too**_ ,Jimmy had texted in the interim.

 _we'll have to see what we can do about that later tonight_ ;-),Duncan responds.

_through security._

_piss-poor coffee. even you make better._

Jimmy must already be at his desk because he responds almost immediately.

**_*eyeroll*_ **

**_already wishing I was having lunch with you rather than my mum._ **

_**do you think I could convince one of the locals to attempt a minor act of vandalism just before her ferry gets in?** _

Duncan knows that Jimmy grumbles about his parents but that it's mostly good natured. Like Fran with her parents, the relationship is one of occasional exasperation -- sometimes genuine frustration -- but an underlying fondness. Jimmy rarely says no to his mother's invitations to lunch unless he is genuinely unavailable. Duncan can discern the uncharacteristic anxiety -- fear is too strong a word -- that underlies Jimmy's nervous talk about this particular lunch with Mary -- the first time he's seen either of his parents in person since he and Duncan have become lovers. Duncan wishes, not for the first time, that he had the first idea how to be helpful. But the truth is the (inevitable, he knows) moment that Jimmy comes out to Mary and James is making Duncan's own stomach clench with fears of his own.

Duncan has never had much of a notion what to do with Cassie's grandparents on either side. He's a bit closer to Bev and Charlie, Fran's parents, in part because he's known them since before Cassie was born. And a particular kind of unshakable trust had grown between them during the months of Fran's illness and death. Duncan had seen them with her, and with Cassie; saw how they never tried to override Jimmy and Fran's decisions. How they never once looked askance at his presence. Shared grief and mutual reliance goes a long way in building trust and respect.

James and Mary are a different matter. They've spent their whole lives deeply rooted on Fair Isle, as their parents before them, and their parents before them. That itself hasn't narrowed their outlook, precisely. He wouldn't call them close-minded (though as a younger man, he would have). But they seem at a loss when faced with Duncan's lack of family encumbrances: They don’t know how to talk with someone with whom they have so little shared history, who has no parents, grandparents, second cousins, nieces and nephews and third cousins thrice removed to inquire after. It leads to awkward pauses in any conversation. And he knows they blame him for Cassie's dropping out of university, and for her expatriate adventuring.

Jimmy says his parents accept his bisexuality. The tension in his shoulders the night before, when he told Duncan about that first confrontation that summer when he'd fled Dundee for Fair Isle, had been testiment to the fact that some part of him, at least, wasn't so sure. Duncan snorts to himself as he thinks back over the sorry tale. Everyone has youthful mistakes in their past -- Duncan himself can hardly point fingers -- but he could have told Jimmy a boy from Dundee had been his first mistake. True, Jimmy's parents hadn't turned him out. But it doesn't sound like they've hung a rainbow flag in their window either. Duncan wonders, not for the first time, about James' theological views on the matter. He distrusts men of the cloth on principal -- certainly where questions of sexual ethics are concerned -- and the man ministers in a church that still officially holds same-sex desire a sin.

So it worries Duncan that Jimmy is anxious. It worries him that Jimmy will most likely be telling his parents when Duncan won't be there to work the tension out of Jimmy's shoulders, and remind him of all the reasons his parents approval aren't the be all and end all. He knows shadows of his own youth haunt the conversation. Memories of angry shouting and punishing silence, the occasional smack, the eventual eviction. The decades of estrangement since. If his sister Shelley hadn't found him on Facebook he would have no idea whether any of them were still alive.

Not that the two of them have talked directly since Shelley had tracked him down, somehow, on social media. Shelley’s _like_ on his professional page was all that really connected them. Her request to friend him goes unanswered, and he’s never answered her few, tentative private messages. He feels shite about igoring her -- but so far that hasn’t been enough to push him past his fear of reconnecting.

Still. It comforts him to know she got out. That perhaps someday he might be brave enough to respond to her. He's always felt guilty about walking away from his little sister. Ten years older than Shelley, he'd worried about her vulnerability once he was no longer there to draw their father's anger. Sometimes he goes to look at her Facebook page: The pictures of her two little boys, Zachery and Caleb, her husband Liam. They live in Pitlochry. Liam has a job with the forestry commission. Shelley seems to be a mum full-time; her Facebook is mostly pictures of the kids. She looks happy. The children’s smiles don’t have the haunted, hunted look he remembers from the snapshots taken in his own childhood. He knows he could likely find out, through her, what their older brothers Simon or Robbie are doing with their lives, whether their parents have kicked the bucket yet. But he hasn't had the nerve in the past two years. He isn't sure he has the nerve now.

Finally, the flight attendants start calling out rows for boarding and the loose affiliation of waiting passengers becomes an earnest queue. _boarding now_ , he texts to Jimmy.  _don't go stealing from Boot's just to get yourself out of lunch with Mary._ He tosses what's left of the crap coffee into a nearby bin and holds out his mobile for the smiling woman scanning the boarding passes at the gate and makes his way down the ramp and narrow aisle to his seat. _**I won't. Have a good flight, love**_ , Jimmy texts back as Duncan's waiting for the woman in front of him to stow her overstuffed carry on. He's last in his row to take a seat and buckles his seatbelt, leaning back to close his eyes with a sigh. Knotty family problems won't untangle if he keeps tugging them, with no sense of where the ends may be. He has to trust Jimmy knows how to handle his parents and that he knows to call Duncan for help if he doesn't. Because whatever comes next, they're in this together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note to say that I checked while writing this chapter and [as of May 2017](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/25/church-of-scotland-step-towards-conducting-same-sex-marriage) the Church of Scotland appears to be in the process of revising their official stance on same-sex marriage. Given that the events of this series take place in 2015 it's understandable that Duncan is wary.


	6. lunch with mary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don't know what you expect me to say," Mary says, finally. Her hands are still smoothing at the already-smooth napkin in her lap. "You're happy?"

Jimmy dawdles on his way to meet Mary at the cafe they’d agreed to on the high street. He stops at the chemist’s for a bottle of paracetamol that he keeps forgetting to buy for his desk, then finds himself in the library considering the shelf of recent acquisitions. He'll need something besides iTV to keep himself occupied while Duncan is away, and working when Jimmy will be more available to text and talk.

He has an absurd, besotted desire to ask Duncan if he might call up at the beginning of a set and just leave the connection live so Jimmy can fall asleep to the sound of Duncan playing. He remembers a girlfriend in secondary school, Lisa Tretheway, with whom he would listen to albums this way; in the days before mobile phones he got told off by his parents more than once for tying up the telephone line with the cordless receiver resting next to the speaker of his Sony CD player.

His mobile vibrates in his pocket: Mary, not Duncan, letting him know she's procured a table. A less than subtle way of asking when she might expect to see him.

 _On my way_ , he replies, before taking the books he has in hand to the desk for checkout. A paperback about werewolves -- a series he vaguely remembers Cassie reading -- a collection of travel essays, a Argentinean cookbook. Maybe he'll actually try cooking a recipe or two on his own, without Duncan there to magically produce delicious meals after which Jimmy's only task has been to clean up. And (a much more recent domestic responsibility) thank the cook for his efforts in more...creative ways.

He smiles privately to himself as he exits the library with the books under his arm. The night before had been an early one, since Duncan had to be at the airport by six, but that hadn't stopped them from lazily familiar kisses, from an exchange of orgasms built through sleepy caresses, a rocking of a hip here, the twist of a wrist there, kisses pressed down necks, licked around nipples, reassurances more than anything else: _I'm here, I'll be back, I'll be counting the days._

The midday sun is bright, and he squints as he pockets his mobile and sets off down the pavement. His fingers itch to text Duncan -- anything, everything, nothing, just to stay connected. But he's already sent half a dozen texts since Duncan picked up the car at the rental agency and started north to Fraserburgh. He should be able to get through lunch with his own mother, for Christ's sake, before having to call Duncan for a tangible reminder that this thing between them is real, that can't be erased from reality no matter how much Mary might wish her son was normal.

He shakes his head, arguing with himself silently as he crosses to the far side of the street and turns in the direction of the cafe. He's nearly three decades older, and his parents are as well. They've all changed -- the world's changed. There's even such a thing as Shetland Pride, now. The kind with rainbows and a regular pub quiz night. Jimmy's never been, officially, although he’s considered it. One evening, about a year ago he'd found himself in the pub hosting that month's quiz. It had been shortly after Duncan moved with him and Jimmy had been keenly aware of all the ways he did, and didn't, feel he belonged among the tipsy group of young people caught up in the good-natured competition of a pub quiz.

His bisexuality, protected as a closely-held secret throughout secondary school, then acted on most visibly -- most publicly -- in locations away from Shetland has long felt separate from who he is as an islander. Now, it’s as if two continents colliding inside himself. Inevitable, perhaps;  some sort of catalyst for a brilliant new chapter to his life. But with aftershocks to weather. And one of those aftershocks was going to be that his parents will no longer be able to pretend that Jimmy put this particular part of himself aside for good when he married Fran and adopted a daughter.

As he reaches the cafe, Mary waves at him through the front window, a pot of tea and a pair of menus already on the table. He pulls open the glass door, accompanied by the jingle of bells strong from the inside handle, and steps inside. He gestures in the direction of his mother when the aproned young woman behind the counter looks up, and makes his way over to the already-occupied.

"It's good to see you, dear," Mary says as he leans down to press a kiss to her cheek and then he slides into the chair opposite. They haven’t seen one another in person since the last trip he and Cassie took across to Fair Isle -- just over a month gone. Not an unusually lengthy period of time to lapse between visits, but he feels guilty nonetheless. He knows his parents would love to see him more regularly -- and usually he looks for opportunities to take ferry over for supper and perhaps spend the night. But since Cassie’s departure, since things have shifted with Duncan, he’s been actively avoiding even the thought of a visit. Both because he’s wanted to spend every moment with Duncan and because he’s known that he won’t be able to skirt the topic of Duncan once they’re face-to-face.

"It’s good to see you too," he says, picking up his own menu. "How's Dad?"

Mary gestures eloquently at the question, giving him a look over her reading glasses as she picks up the menu. "You know how he is. Grumbling over his flock while I grumble over mine. Loving every minute of it."

"You were over at Lou's this morning?" His mother has been weaving and selling Fair Isle blankets since he was a boy. She's more recently branched out to skeins of hand-dyed wool and roving. He has suspicions she could get more for it if she sold online, but her sheep have never been about paying the bills -- at least since Jimmy left home.  Jimmy suspects his mother gets more out of her regular trips to Lerwick and her involvement in the guild than she would selling through exclusively.

"He always does a brisk business this time of year," she says, gesturing the waitress over with a wave of her hand to take their order. "What with all the holidaying southerners. Yes, dear, might I have the shepherd’s pie? And one of your side salads -- it doesn't have radishes, does it?"

As the girl affirms that, no, the salad has no radishes Jimmy skims the menu and orders a baguette with prosciutto and some sort of compote and Brie. And a cider to take the edge off his nerves. While he’s giving his order, his mobile buzzes in his pocket; a text not a call so Sandy has no urgent request. He has no excuse to pull the mobile up and interrupt the meal, except --

\-- he pulls it out just to check and sees that Duncan has arrived in Fraserburgh.

"Are you working a case?" his mother asks brightly, if a bit pointedly.

"I'm always working cases, Mum," he reminds her. "More than one at a time. It's not like on CSI. Mostly, it's dull paperwork and waiting for people to return your calls. But no," he hesitates with the opening presented. "No, Duncan's just on tour. They open tonight in Fraserburgh and he was texting to let me know he's got in safe."

Mary considers him over her glasses again as she tops off her teacup from the pot takes a sip. "Mmm."

He considers his next words carefully, as he responds to Duncan's text: _With Mum. Have not committed vandalism. Will call later. Tell me when._ He makes himself shove the phone back in his pocket without waiting for Duncan’s response.

"Mmm," he echoes her non-committal tone. "You know I ask both Duncan and Cassie to stay in touch when they travel."

"Still sleeping on your couch, is he?" Mary has made it clear on a number of occasions that she thinks Duncan is taking advantage. Jimmy is pretty sure she'll be as, if not more, critical once she learns Duncan is most certainly _not_ sleeping on the couch. Unless you counted the nap he'd taken on Sunday ... head pillowed on Jimmy's thigh. He rubs his palm down the front of his jeans in memory of Duncan’s sleepy weight.

"He's been using Cassie's room," Jimmy corrects, trying to keep his voice mild. "But yes, he's living with me. It's his home for as long as he wants it to be." _Hopefully for as long as we both shall live._

Mary sniffs. "Pays his share of the rent on time, I hope."

Duncan has insisted, even though Jimmy makes nearly twice what Duncan does during a good year. But Jimmy feels protective of Duncan's privacy so he's not going to bring that up. And, anyway, he's already started to wonder about the best way to make Duncan a co-owner of the property. So: “Yes,” is all he says. Probably more repressively than he needs to, but he’s tired of his mother’s skepticism that Duncan can -- and is more than willing to -- pull his own weight. He’s been doing it long before Jimmy had to worry about making rent, in fact.

Jimmy realizes he should just seize the moment and say what he needs to say.

"Look, Mum," he says, leaning forward and trying to remember Sandy's clap on the shoulder, Rhona's satisfied smile, Cassie's string of happy emoji, Euan’s quiet support. "Duncan's moved in on a permanent basis now. He's my partner."

He feels the rush of adrenaline that always seems -- for him, at least -- to come with this sort of disclosure. _My partner, my lover, my co-parent, husband already in all but name._ He panics for a moment that he should have chosen different -- _better_ \-- words. Words less open to sanitized, rationalized interpretation. Of course that’s the moment they're interrupted by the waitress, returning with Jimmy’s cider and their meals on a deftly-balanced tray. Jimmy leans back so she can put his plate down, then the cider. Mary does the same as Jimmy watches her from across the table, wondering what she’s going to say once the momentary interruption has passed. She's looking at the waitress, not Jimmy, although her shoulders are relaxed and her hands seem to be resting easily in her lap as she spreads the cloth napkin over her knees.

"Is there anything else I can get for either of you?" The girl inquires. Both Mary and Jimmy shake their heads. “Thank you,” Jimmy says to her.

"Cheers," the girl responds, and turns away to take the order of a middle-aged husband and wife two tables over. Jimmy and his mother are left to consider at one another across the table.

"I don't know what you expect me to say," Mary says, finally. Her hands are still smoothing at the already-smooth napkin in her lap. "You're happy?"

"Yeah," Jimmy smiles. "We really are." The _we_ feels a bit foreign, but no less accurate on his tongue. “It’s been -- it’s been good.”

"Have you told your father yet?" She's studying his face carefully and he wonders what she sees there. He’s been less worried about speaking with his father, actually. Mostly because if his father is uncomfortable, he’ll simply shift into his pastoral role. It’s a strategy that has infuriated Jimmy in the past -- _you’re my father not my minister!_ he used to yell at his da when James tries to mediate between Jimmy and Mary at their most antagonistic. But it does mean that unless Jimmy pushes, James is unlikely to express personal disapproval of Duncan or of their relationship. Mary on the other hand -- whether or not she realizes it, he suspects her dislike of Duncan as Cassie’s other father is in part due to her discomfort with his openness about who he fucks. And the fact that Jimmy’s been comfortable around _a man like that_ in a way that reminds her that Jimmy, too, is that sort of man.

"No, I haven't spoken with him since -- it's all a bit new."

She levels her gaze at him, reproving. "Jimmy."

He shrugs. "I know -- I know! It's -- it _was_ complicated.”

She waves a hand in front of her face, dismissing his (admittedly feeble) protestations. " _Life_ is complicated. If you don't know that by now there's no help for you.”

He laughs. It feels good to laugh about this. Good to laugh with his _mother_ about this. "Cassie contends we've made it  _too_ complicated," he says, ruefully.  _OMG can't believe it took you this long!!!_ was, in fact, the way she'd expressed it. 

She shakes her head at him. "That's what they always believe, when they're that young, and in love." Perhaps he only imagines the reproof in her voice. "And what have you heard from her lately?" Mary asks, quick on the heels of her last words as she cuts into her shepherd's pie. "She hasn’t responded to my last email.”

He accepts this for the change of subject it clearly is. He’s not under any illusion that his mother is done weighing in, but at least he’s made Duncan’s place in his life clear. Everything else can wait for another day.


	7. calling duncan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's promised to call his father but needs to hear Duncan's voice first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: Brief discussion about child neglect/physical abuse (non-sexual) in Duncan's childhood home.

Jimmy rings Duncan's mobile as soon as he's dropped Mary off at her ferry back to Fair Isle. He's promised to call his father but needs to hear Duncan's voice first.

"Love," Duncan says by way of greeting. That single word is enough to ground Jimmy in the here-and-now. The now of loving, and being loved, by Duncan in a way that is right for them -- regardless of his mother’s reservations. "You survived."

"I did. Still have to ring my da. Mum’s orders."

"If she's still ordering you about it can't have gone that badly."

"She wasn't exactly overjoyed," Jimmy sighs, fumbling for the keyfob in his pocket. Maybe he's only cringing at memories, judging his mother unfairly. But he doesn’t think he’s entirely imagining the reserve that had crept into the remainder of their shared meal. "She asked were we happy, and had I told Da, and then clearly wanted to change the subject." He shrugs, even though he knows Duncan can't see the gesture.

"You know I haven't the faintest how these things usually go, mate," Duncan says. Jimmy pictures him stretched out on a neatly made bed in the Fraserburgh guesthouse. Imagines him stripped down to the worn jeans and faded green t-shirt that he had pulled on that morning. He sounds a bit worn but at ease. Focused on their conversation, free from other distractions. "Got kicked out of the house long before that would ever have been a topic of conversation."

"Yeah, about that --" Jimmy begins, unlocking the driver’s side door of his car but not climbing in. There’s a lovely sea breeze blowing in over the carpark and the inside of his car will be hot from the mid-afternoon sun. He leans on the top of the open door and looks out over the wharf.

Duncan sighs, and Jimmy can picture the resigned look on his face. "There's nothing much to it, in the end," he says. "I know -- I _know_ \-- you'll be wanting to look them up and send social services after 'em, and I wouldn't blame you -- won't blame you for wishing it, aye? But it's long past. And I can't go digging up all the muck I've put behind me -- not if I'm hoping to talk to Shelley and make a decent go of patching things up with her. You understand?"

Jimmy bites his tongue against the impulse to try and lay out the options to Duncan as he might a witness. To make it clear that they -- that _he_ \-- takes child neglect and abuse seriously. That often children don’t come forward until long after the fact. That it’s not always an insurmountable barrier to successful prosecution. But that’s not his role here; would never be his role in this, even if Duncan chose -- at some point -- to take legal steps.

"I understand. I won't do anything without you permission. It's your show."

There's a pause. They probably shouldn’t be having this discussion by telephone, but Jimmy knows sometimes it’s easier this way. That Duncan might find it easier to get the words out. He waits, watching the ferries move in their near-silent dance in and out of the docks.

"The thing you have to understand about my parents," Duncan says, finally, "is that it probably was the best they could do. My father thought beating the softness out of his boys was how you turn 'em into men. My brothers responded well, in their own way. I didn't. So the minute I could quit school I did and left."

Duncan had been right about Jimmy’s reaction. The idea of anyone hitting a young Duncan -- sweet, kind Duncan whom Jimmy has never seen lash out, or even _threaten_ to lash out, physically in anger -- makes Jimmy want to call in every favor he’s owed as a DCI to ensure those people are never in a position to hurt Duncan again. Or anyone else for that matter.

"Duncan--" he begins. Then has to swallow and try again. "Where did you go? When you left?"

"I was lucky, because of the music scene," Duncan says. "I’d been skiving off school -- hanging around the pubs and clubs and studios in Dundee. I knew a couple in Edinburgh who let me crash on their couch for a few months, then I moved into a flat in Arbroath with a few mates, and then another flat with another few mates -- that was in Glasgow. It was touch and go for a few years, but I never had to sleep rough for more than a handful of nights."

"You shouldn't have had to sleep rough at all, love," Jimmy says.  

"That you believe that is just one of the many reasons I love you." Duncan's voice is soft in Jimmy's ear. "And part of why I've always trusted you with Cassie. If she ever ran off you wouldn't give up until she was found. Neither of my parents ever came looking for me."

They share another few heartbeats of silence across the connection. If Jimmy were in the same room as Duncan, he'd reach out and pull him in for a hug. Curl around Duncan on the bed and remind him that he has people in his life, now -- Jimmy and Cassie just for starters -- who would never give up until he was found.

He thinks of a picture book Cassie had when she was small, about a mother rabbit and her baby. The baby rabbit threatens to run away and the mother rabbit insists that wherever her baby goes, she will find them. The book had had the soothing, repetitive rhythm of many children's picture books; Jimmy remembers all three of them reading it to Cassie before she had moved on to books with more words and fewer pictures.

Cassie had grown up with three mama bunnies; Jimmy himself with two. His mother and father are far from perfect, but they have never threatened him with abandonment. He had always known they loved him. He can hear in Duncan's voice the reality of growing into adulthood without that knowledge. He thinks, with renewed gratitude, of the effort Duncan has made to be a parent unlike his own.

"That they never cared enough to find you makes them rubbish," Jimmy says. "They gave up their right to know you -- or to know our family. I’m sorry for that."

"Thank you," Duncan says, after a further moment of silence. He doesn't elaborate and Jimmy thinks they may not need further words. That he understands the gratitude that suffuses their lives right now: thankfulness that they have one another, have Cassie, have friends and colleagues who do truly _see_ them. Together, they will be able to weather the rougher seas.

"I might --" Duncan pauses. "I might send Shelley a message."

"Tell me how it goes, aye?"

"I will."

"I should ring off and call Dad before Mum gets home,"

"And I should have a nap before the others arrive,” Jimmy can hear the yawn in Duncan’s voice. “Look under your pillow when you get home this evening.”

Something in Duncan’s voice makes Jimmy flush as he slides into the driver’s seat of his car. "Really?"

“Yes, really,” and there’s the smile in Duncan’s voice. “But not until after you’ve called your da _and_ you’ve finished work for the day.”

“Ah, _that_ sort of present, is it?"

“Mmm. Not telling.”

Jimmy doesn’t know what to say to that but: “I’ll miss you. Tonight.”

“Me too, love,” Duncan replies. “Talk tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.” Jimmy rings off and looks down at his mobile screen for a moment. Then takes a deep breath, types in his father's mobile number, and initiates the call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Jimmy recalls, if you don't know it, is [_The Runaway Bunny_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Runaway_Bunny) by Margaret Wise Brown (1942).


	8. calling james

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Thank you for telling us," James says, finally, his voice a bit formal but not unkind.

"Jimmy," James picks up. "Everything's all right?"

"Yes, yes," Jimmy says. "Nothing's wrong." It says something about their relationship, he supposes, that they speak on the phone more frequently in a professional rather than personal capacity: When one of his father's parishioners needs the help of a policeman or when someone involved in one of Jimmy's investigations might benefit from the presence of their minister.

"Dad, I --" he pauses. "I wanted to tell you. I spoke with Mum today. Duncan and I -- we're together, now. He's away at the minute, on tour. But Cassie knows, and a few other people, so. I -- we wanted you to hear it from us. Not second-hand, from someone else." _We aren't hiding it,_ he almost says, but stops himself. It seems too defensive to even bring up being closeted as a possibility. He has never seriously considered it in his adult life, and while both he and Duncan have let presumptions of heterosexuality slide in the past they’ve also allowed themselves to be read as a gay couple even before it was true.

Especially when Cassie was younger, and they would take her on holiday, hotel staff and waitstaff at restaurants, museum docents and shopkeepers would beam at them. They got the occasional cold shoulder or the nosey individual who really pressed to find out which of them was the _real_ father. But people generally went out of their way to be kind as if treating The Gay Dads with courtesy was their good deed for the month. Jimmy hadn’t felt inclined to rob them of that pleasure, and Duncan never said anything either. At the time, Jimmy had felt slightly guilty about the part of him that wished their lack of denials was enough to make it true. Now he wonders if Duncan ever felt the same.

He drags his attention back to the silence on the other end of the line. Jimmy hears one of his parents' dogs bark, distantly, in the background. His father must be in the small room originally built as a front parlor, what passes for his home office.

"Thank you for telling us," James says, finally, his voice a bit formal but not unkind. "When Duncan is back from his trip you should come over to Fair Isle for dinner. Your mother would enjoy that."

Jimmy rolls his eyes, knowing his da can't see. Fran had been the one who first pointed out that his father did this: always asking on behalf of Mary when it was, in fact, a personal request. Ever since, Jimmy hasn't been able to stop noticing it.

"We will," he promises, deciding this isn't the day to point out that his mum was perfectly able to speak for herself.

"That young Tulloch lad's come out as well," James continues. "Brought his young man to services during the last school holiday."

"Well, there you go. Fair Isle's produced at least two of us," Jimmy says, torn between laughter and something that feels akin to disappointment. Hurt. Perhaps a bit of anger. It's the same not-belonging he had felt in that pub last year watching the younger queer kids free and easy with each other, and the world around them, in a way he had very much not been at their age. He can't imagine himself in Angus Tulloch's shoes, bringing a lover to his father's church; sitting in one of the wooden pews, sharing a hymnal, holding hands during the benediction. At least not at the age of nineteen. He feels badly for resenting Angus his courage. He hopes Angus and whomever his boyfriend is -- Joe, or someone new -- the best of futures. But at the same time it feels like Jimmy ought to have been braver and ... Well, _and what_ is the question isn't it? He'd fumbled along his own path and they've fumbled along theirs.

Jimmy can’t regret -- for too long, at least -- any path that's brought him to Duncan.

"I ought to go, Dad," he says. "Back to work."

"Thank you for calling, son," James says. "And give Duncan my best, aye?

"Aye," Jimmy says, "I will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who have forgotten or perhaps never seen the episodes, Angus Tulloch is from "Blue Lightening," a two-part story arc from Season 2 (Episode 5 and Episode 6). Angus is a young man living on Fair Isle with his parents (childhood friends of Jimmy) and Joe Blake is his friend-possibly-boyfriend. Jimmy puts two and two together and is supportive of Angus, and also very adorably thinks he has to explain to Cassie that Angus is gay (cue eye rolling from Cassie).


	9. jimmy, in solitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His body responds before his brain even quite catches up with what he's holding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note that this chapter kicked the rating up to Explicit. Assuming that's a plus, rather than a minus, for y'all.

Without Cassie or Duncan waiting at home for him, Jimmy works until half eight. It's a quiet evening. None of his team are working on anything more urgent than a few drunk-and-disorderlies. They had caught up with their thieves from the Scudder and McCorey farms on Thursday last: A couple of youths up from the mainland, nicking small valuables easily carried out in a rucksack and sold on. Nothing major has come in since then; it's been a blessed couple of months, in fact, without a single suspicious death. With Tosh’s replacement not due to arrive until the fifteenth, Jimmy won’t ask too many questions about a quiet midsummer -- even if they pay for it later in the year.

Without anyone but the desk sergeant about, he's able to all but empty his Inbox and make an inch or two of headway on the stack of papers "to be dealt with later" sitting precariously on his desk. It will be nice to leave for Aberdeen knowing the piles waiting for his return are somewhat diminished. If he stays late all this week and the next ... But he can feel Duncan's disapproval of that thought all the way from the Grampians.

And, anyway, there's whatever Duncan left him waiting under his pillow.

So he leaves just before the clock above the reception desk passes 20:30, nodding silent goodnight to young Phil, who’s on the telephone with someone who -- from what he can tell by the scraps of one-sided conversation -- is reporting a stolen wallet. On his drive home he stops at the Indian takeaway for a curry and rice. It'll be an evening meal for two days and, sentimentally, reminds him of those first nights with Duncan trading kisses over paneer tikka and Peshwari naan.

He eats standing at the kitchen counter, texting intermittently with Cassie for whom it’s just approaching the proper dinner hour. He’s been gradually -- through texts and photos and the occasional video call -- piecing together the new shape of her days. She's teaching English to primary school children and taking intensive classes in Portuguese; she is also, with the seemingly boundless energy of youth, exploring her new home. In the three weeks she's been in São Paulo, in addition to starting her job and language classes, she has already been to the botanical gardens and several museums. She is bold -- certainly bolder than Jimmy has ever been -- navigating the city with her few dozen phrases of Portuguese and a translation app on her phone.

 _I can't believe you're just eating dinner._ She says, with an eye-roll emoji. _I'll tell Da on you, Dad. You really are hopeless without us._

**_I'll have you know I lived alone for three years before I met your mother._ **

_And forgot to eat, I bet._

**_I'll have you know I borrowed a cookbook from the library just today!_ **

_Only because you were panicking about telling Gran._

**_Not entirely._ **

_It went okay?_

**_It went okay._ **

_Do I need to have words with Gran and Granda?_

**_I’ll be sure to let you know if it comes to that, okay?_ **

_I’ll consider it. Go get some sleep, Dad._

* * *

In the bedroom, Jimmy sits down on the edge of their hastily-made bed. Duncan's already established his own side of the bed, which is where Jimmy sinks onto the mattress to pull off his socks and unbutton his shirt. As he does so, he considers the bedside table and small reading lamp they’ve appropriated from Cassie's room. On it are a couple of books, a water glass, a chapstick, a box of tissues. The empty place where Duncan would put his mobile to charge overnight, if he were here.

Jimmy smooths a hand across Duncan's pillow. It will smell of him: Duncan’s shampoo and aftershave, sweat, and sex. Even though Duncan himself is absent, his presence lingers here and Jimmy has been looking forward to crawling between the sheets all day. He leans over a bit further and slides a hand under his own pillow. His finds something soft and heavy with his fingertips. He pulls it out: a small, black faux suede pouch. He opens the drawstring bag and tips the contents into his palm: A pair of nipple clamps, connected by a heavy silver chain.

His body responds before his brain even quite catches up with what he's holding. He feels a wash of arousal prickly across his skin, followed by a flush of self-consciousness. He's never used this particular type of accessory before. They look new and there's something particularly decadent about the idea that Duncan has purchased them specifically for Jimmy to use. It's a unique type of intimacy, somehow made more intimate still by Duncan's absence. Sitting there in Jimmy’s palm they invoke him: _Use these and think of me._

He sets the bag aside and tips the object from one palm to another, feeling the weight of the chain, thinking about how that weight will swing and tug, pulling at his nipples the way Duncan does with thumb and finger, sometimes with teeth. He puts a hand to his chest to feel, through the thin cotton of his t-shirt, the flesh of his pebbled nipples beneath the stroke of his thumb. He's not sure how serious Duncan was about the nipple piercing in Aberdeen; they haven’t spoken of it since their first teasing exchange. But Jimmy hasn't been able to stop thinking about the suggestion. It feels like a way to assert-- even if just in language understood only to the two of them -- that Duncan has laid claim to him.

They haven't spoken with one another (yet) about permanence, about the formalities of weaving their lives together: The house, bank accounts, life insurance, living wills, pensions, and survivor's benefits. Some of the paperwork is already done -- when you share the job of raising a daughter those pieces of paper become urgent necessities. But there are more steps they could take. Jimmy is hesitant to bring it up, especially since he's the one more comfortably off. He doesn't want Duncan to feel he's being _kept_. But at the same time, he wants Duncan to have assurances that when Jimmy says _what's mine is yours_ the words aren't empty promises. _I’m yours_ , that’s what the nipple piercing says. To carry a tiny bit of silver so close to his skin, near to his heart, something Duncan picked out … he shivers. Someday, he thinks, there might be rings and spoken vows. But this feels right, and particular to them.

Jimmy spills the chain and clamps onto the duvet and stands up to brush his teeth and ready for bed. He feels the early morning hours dragging at his limbs but the energy of everything that’s happened in his life over the last fortnight makes him restless. He’s both too weary for an orgasm and also knows he won't be able to fall asleep without one.

He wishes Duncan were home.

He crawls into the bed on his own side, settles back against the pillows, and picks up the gift from Duncan again. Holds the clamps, with their rubber tips, in his fingers and lets the chain swing between his hands. The chrome winks in the light from the bedside lamp. He lowers his hands slightly and lets the chain brush his chest, cold in the evening air against warm, bare skin. He feels arousal wake up again, deep in his belly. He swings the chain again, feeling the cool tickle of the metal against his sternum. He closes his eyes and recalls what it feels like to have Duncan there, kneeling above him, knees and thighs holding him close, hands braced against the mattress on either side of Jimmy's rib cage, head bent to the task of pulling and teasing at Jimmy's nipples -- first one, then the other.

Jimmy pulls in a deep breath, then lets it out, trying to pay attention to how his body feels: relaxed upon the mattress, skin exposed to the slight breeze coming in from the open window. It's been a warm day and despite the lateness of the hour the air is cool, rather than cold, and he's warm from contemplating things. He listens to the evening outside, imagines the contrast between the privacy and quiet of his bedroom and the noisy, bustling pub where Duncan is playing. He's looking forward, he realizes, to telling Duncan in the morning: _Did you think of me, then? I thought of you._

He rubs at a nipple, experimentally, feeling it peak beneath his thumb and finger. He had forgotten, in the years of infrequent intimacies, how good it felt to be handled there, roughly. It had been Fran who first taught him that nipples were worth time and attention. Men, she said with amusement in her voice, learned too early to think of their pricks as the be all and end all of sexual pleasure. And while Jimmy couldn't speak for all men it was certainly true that Fran had taught him how to linger, how to enjoy the journey as well as the destination. Perhaps she had taught Duncan as well...or perhaps Duncan had taught her. Perhaps they had learned together. Jimmy slips the first of the clamps around his nipple in place of thumb and forefinger. Pushes the metal band in place until the pinch turns slightly painful, then pushes it just a bit further. The flesh burns and his dick twitches with interest.

He traces his fingers along the connecting chain and over to the other nipple. He repeats the process -- rub, peak, pinch, burn -- aware of his growing arousal, deliberately not touching himself below his navel. He thinks of that morning at the McCorey’s plantation, back pressed against the pine tree, mobile to his ear and hand at his groin, listening to Duncan strain at the self-imposed discipline of _not_ touching.

He feels absurdly shy doing this, running his own hands down the soft swell of his belly to the crease where thighs and hip bones meet. Sweeping his palms back to his chest, hooking a finger under the chain and twisting it tight. The nip of the metal clamps goes shivering down to his groin, where it pools; a building pressure. He slides his hands back down to his thighs and spreads his legs with his palms to the inside of his thighs. Bends his knees so his legs fall open, as if to make room for Duncan to settle between them. It feels like he's putting on a bit of a show for one, except the audience he's performing for is absent. He's rarely this slow with himself, this deliberate. When you're on your own, and time is scarce, efficient orgasms have a real appeal. But these past weeks with Duncan have reminded him of the pleasures to be found in inefficiency -- of allowing things build slowly, pleasure by pleasure, until at some point in the indefinite future everything spills over.

He arches into his own touch, relishing the stretch of muscle from toes to scalp. It’s the sort of full-body shudder he has felt, more than once these past days, under his hands in Duncan's limbs. Duncan rolling up into his touch like a cat, all but purring at the contact. Jimmy wonders at this mystery of Duncan: how a child who ran from his father’s beatings has such trust in the touch of others. In the caress of Jimmy's hands. It's such a gift.

There's a particular sort of agony, Jimmy thinks, in solitary sex following a period of such intense closeness with Duncan. He's been touch-starved for years -- only letting himself understand how much now the drought is gone -- and for the past few weeks he and Duncan have been in constant physical contact. Most of it not even sexual, except in the way all contact between lovers. Soaping one another in the shower, a hand at the small of a back as the coffee is brewing, ankles tangling at the dinner table, hips bumping purposefully together at the kitchen sink, an evening footrub, nights tangled together in sleep. In contrast, the bed feels as vast as the ocean without Duncan, his skin tingling from the lack of contact.

Jimmy rolls to his knees and elbows, pressing his forehead against his folded forearms. The movement does what he intended, letting the chain swing free from his nipples and drag at pinched flesh. He bites his tongue against the burn. The weight from his chest is echoed by the full heaviness at his groin, his dick and balls all heat and damp and the musk of arousal. He shouldn't find the scent of his own body this sexy, he thinks hazily. It feels perverse, somehow. Selfish. Yet it’s a powerful reminder of his ability to _want_ and to feel good in his own skin -- both of which he finds difficult. He's always found it easier to attend to other peoples' wants and needs. To focus on his own, the way Duncan pushes him to do, is both joyous and terrifying.

He rests there, on his elbows and knees, for the space of a few deep breaths. Each inhale, the scent of sex all around him, a reminder of how many times he and Duncan have already made love in this bed. He can smell Duncan's shampoo, his aftershave, the laundry detergent he uses, his sweat alongside the tang of his own arousal. He rocks back on his haunches, just enough to graze his dick along the friction of the duvet, feeling the way his movements, along with the slide of the bedclothes, work to push his knees further apart, feeling the stretch that movement brings to the muscles of his groin.

The last time he’d been on his knees like this had been two days earlier on a sunlit Sunday afternoon. Duncan had knelt behind him then, hands guiding Jimmy’s hips and his own erection sliding along and against Jimmy's balls, the root of his cock. It had been messy, far from coordinated, both of them sweaty and already well-fucked enough that their movements were more languid than urgent. They couldn't be bothered with a condom -- though there was a box of them, now, within arm's reach in the drawer of Jimmy's bedside table. Instead, Duncan had fished out the bright pink plug and slid it home in Jimmy’s arse with a generous slick of lube, then pulled Jimmy's filled-up, wrung-out body to his hips and begun rocking them both together. _There's my lad, there's my sweet lad, my love_ , he'd said, not much more than a murmur, while Jimmy let himself sink into the feeling of being _taken_.

There's no Duncan to push back against, tonight. It's all just cool evening air and exposure, a nakedness that leaves him trembling with the need to hide -- and also to show everyone, anyone how glorious it feels to let go and be loved.

When he can't stand the emptiness one more second he rolls onto his back and takes himself in a loose grip. "Ah, _fuck_ ," he says to the empty room. A rasping prayer of a sound. And it takes no time at all, in the end. A few long strokes to acclimate himself to touch, then one, two, three firmer tugs and everything seizes from the soles of his feet to the top of his scalp pulling impossibly tight, and then the pleasure crests as he spills hot over his fist.

Muscle by muscle he slides back down from the peak of orgasm, finally dragging his hand away from his softening dick to fumble two-handed at the nipple clamps. His nipples smart with pain that no longer feels quite _good_ but isn't truly uncomfortable either. He tosses the clamps and chain aside and considers getting up for a piss. He'll have to, in a few minutes. But most of his body still isn't on board with doing anything other than enjoy post-coital bonelessness. He closes his eyes as his pulse slow against the inside of his skin. The emptiness of the bed is both more and less acute than before, the orgasm reminding him forcefully of all the ways he is no longer quite so alone -- while also casting into stark relief the lack of Duncan's languid self to gather in against his chest as they both settle into sleep.

Finally, he drags himself back up from the edge of sleep for a trip to the toilet, then returns to the bedroom. Without bothering to turn on a light he rummages in the laundry basket in the corner for the t-shirt that Duncan had left on the floor that morning and Jimmy -- in what he decides was a mad fit of tidyness -- had tossed into the wash. He pulls it on over his head and inhales the scent of Duncan that surrounds him. Sleepy and spent, he crawls back into bed and soon drifts off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are the nipple clamps I had in mind: [Tweezer Clamps (Good Vibes)](https://www.goodvibes.com/s/sex-toys/p/GV14242/good-vibrations-toys/tweezer-clamps).


	10. duncan, in stirling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm not going to tell you you should message her and grovel a bit," Sky smiles and elbows him in the arm. "But you should totally--"
> 
> "--message her and grovel a bit, yeah," Duncan sighs, a smiles back.

On their second day in Stirling, Sky drags Duncan up to the castle for a stroll around the gardens. They stop for a tapestry-weaving demonstration in the great hall, buy ice creams in the tea room, and end up on the battlements looking out toward the monstrosity of the Wallace monument rising up from the land to the north of the city.

"What is it like, then, to work so closely with your sisters?" Duncan asks, turning to lean on his elbows against the outer wall and watch a couple -- a man and a woman -- herding three small redheads across the green.

Sky glances sideways at him and smiles. "Quite brilliant, actually," she says. "Annie and Arden and I, we've been working together as long as we've been playing together. You can't let things fester when you see each other day in, day out, you know?"

Duncan nods, thinking of life with Jimmy, but he can’t make that knowledge translate from _lover_ to _siblings_.  The MacCraigs have always baffled him with their easy, welcoming kindness. It was their uncle Rory whom he'd known first -- a fiddler, and one of the many musicians with whom Duncan had once made a temporary home. He's known Sky since she was three years old, barely out of nappies and here she was twenty-seven. Grown up amidst the tumbling expansion of her family through temporary lodgers like himself, then her sisters’ partners, then bairns. She’s the only one of the three sisters still (perhaps a bit defiantly?) unpartnered; he knows she has no wish for kids of her own. But she pitches in and seems to belong among them nonetheless. He can’t picture _belonging_ in any group that included the family he’d grown up among but somehow never felt a part of.

He wonders -- not for the first time -- if he and Shelley could have made a go of it, together. If he could have grown up just enough to give her a home where meals were predictable, clothes were clean, bedtime was peaceful, and people didn’t hit one another in anger. She'd only been seven when Duncan left and he knows it isn't rational to blame himself. He’d been a child himself, still, no matter how he would have bridled at the suggestion. He’d had no sure way to keep a roof over his own head, never mind provide stability for a kid barely out of nursery. But all the rational reasons fall to the wayside when it comes to wishing he had been smarter or braver or stuck it out for a year or two longer. Until he could have done something more.

"It's not a thing I've had much experience with," he says, finally. "Do you think --" he pauses. "Do you think if Annie hadn't spoken to you since you were a little kid -- as little as one of those bairns --" he nods to the three redheads now clambering over one of the cannons, transmuted by time from weapon of war to tourist photo op. "You'd want to hear from her?"

"Yes," Sky says immediately. Then, "I mean, it might depend, like, on why she'd disappeared, aye? If she'd gone and committed murder or something ... nah, even then I'd rather know than not." She pauses to lick a spot of chocolate ice cream from where it's dried on her wrist, giving him a canny look from beneath her shock of ice blue curls.

"This is about your sister, isn't it?" He remembers, then, that he'd been at the Edinburgh Fringe with the MacCraigs when Shelley had first messaged him.

"Yeah," Duncan stuffs his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and watches as the oldest child in the family group leaps, with the fearlessness of the young, down from the cannon and starts demonstrating somersaults to the child closest to her in height.

"You still haven't messaged her then?" Sky twitches her nose and gives him a narrow look that reminds him of Cassie. He feels guilty all over again at never having told Cassie that her aunt was out there, wanting to know about their lives. Not one of his prouder moments as a parent. But he'd been paralyzed by the fear that reaching out into that vortex would just pull him -- and, with him, Cassie -- back into everything he'd fled when he was younger than Cassie was now. He'd promised her, even before she was born, that he'd never do that to her. And even though she was old enough to make her own choices now ... he's hesitated.

He shrugs. "I let it go and now it feels..." As if anything he writes now will have to justify his long silence, and his reason for breaking it. _My daughter is now safely an ocean away_ feels cruel and _I've fallen in love_ too cliche, though both are true in their own way. He doesn’t think he could have done this, before now. The only other time he seriously considered seeking out anyone in his family had been shortly after Cassie was born, and that had been an impulse borne out of rage rather than anything softer: curiosity, longing, love. Every time he held his tiny child -- she’d barely stretched the length of his forearm at first -- he’d thought of how easy it had turned out to be, loving this brand new person, and how even that simple act was something his parents had been unable to manage.

"I'm not going to tell you you should message her and grovel a bit," Sky smiles and elbows him in the arm. "But you should totally--"

"--message her and grovel a bit, yeah," Duncan sighs, a smiles back. He shouldn't -- and doesn't, really -- need a kid like Sky to tell him so. But he's grateful to her for giving him the nudge. "Maybe this afternoon." It feels safer, almost, to send a message while he's on tour. Less like she might show up on his doorstep demanding explanations when he isn't sure he has any to give. Less like Jimmy will be there, encouraging and hopeful, to push him faster down the road of family connection than he's able to cope with.

* * *

Back in his room that afternoon, ready to take his usual mid-day nap before an evening gig, he stretches out on the bed and stares at the old messages in his Facebook app, dated over a year ago.

_Duncan?_

_God, this feels so weird._

_I'm pretty sure you're my brother Duncan. This is Shelley Hunter -- Shelley Davies now._

He remembers the near-paralyzing shame and guilt that had washed over him like a fever when the notification had first popped up on his phone.

_You might not remember me very well. I was just a kid when you left._

That had hurt, even though he knew she was probably saying that as a comfort more for herself than for him. Of course he remembers her. She'd been tiny and fierce, with a loud voice and a kind heart. Always giving her toys to the other kids on the estate and kicking even the bigger kids who crossed her. Few things about her Facebook feed, on which he's lurked for the past year, have surprised him: She's still tiny, fierce, loud, and kind. He wants to say: _I remember helping you put your nightie on_. He wants to say: _I remember making sure you brushed your teeth._ He wants to say: _I remember when you climbed into my bed because of the monsters in your closet_.

 _I guess I just wanted to know you're okay._ She’d written, a few hours after the first messages, when he had failed to reply.

_You seem to be okay._

_The kids will be excited to know their musician uncle!_

And then, a few days later:

_Anyway. I don't know if you even check your Facebook._

_But I wanted you to know._

_If you want to reconnect._

_I'm here._

Finally, Duncan swipes his forefinger over the keyboard and types out a careful reply.

**_Dear Shelley,_ **

**_I don't know how to explain why it has taken me a year to respond to your message. It is me, your brother, Duncan. And I'm glad you found me. I should have come looking for you first. I'm sorry._ **

**_I am okay. You know about my music. I also have a daughter, Cassie. She's just turned twenty this June. A few weeks ago she moved to São Paulo to live with her partner, Edison, and teach English. She's working with primary school children about the age of your lads._ **

That bit feels like neutral ground. She's a mum, he's a dad. They're both trying hard to be better parents than their parents had been. The next sentence is harder.

**_Jimmy and I live in Lerwick._ **

He studies the sentence, considering variations:

_My partner, Jimmy, and I..._

_Jimmy (Cassie's other dad) and I..._

Unable to think of a better way to make their relationship clear without confusing matters further -- or turning it into a strange, defensive sort of statement (JUST TO BE CLEAR I AM GAY) -- he lets the six words stand on their own and forges on.

**_Jimmy is a DCI; who would have guessed I’d end up with a copper. But he puts up with me, reprobate that I am._ **

There. That makes it clear without seeming strained.

He pauses again. Then closes:

**_If you still read my page you might have noticed I'm on tour. Jimmy is meeting me in Aberdeen on the 12th and we'll be in the city with no real plans until the 25th. Fancy meeting for a coffee?_ **

**_Duncan_ **

There. It's done and the ball is back in her court. He hits enter on the message before he can talk himself out of it and then tosses the mobile across the bed, far enough he'd have to make an effort to retrieve it. Then he lays back and closes his eyes to try and get some sleep before work.

* * *

He wakes up to his alarm momentarily disoriented. The light in this hotel is backwards from the light in their bedroom back in Shetland. And Jimmy isn’t there; at first he thinks Jimmy must still be at work and he’s dozed off before dinner and then remembers where he is and that the alarm going off means he’ll need to get up and shower and eat something before he’s due at the venue.

He fumbles across the bed for his mobile, only remembering as he turns off the alarm why it was so far away in the first place.

Shelley has responded.

Duncan feels his sleep-sluggish pulse pick up at the sight of her Facebook user icon bobbing there on his screen. He swipes it away almost reflexively and opens a string of texts from Jimmy instead. They've been sent over the course of the past three hours while Duncan slept, intermittently and without any indication that Jimmy was waiting for a response. This was a new genre of texting for them: messages without the barest excuse for contact beyond the tug of reaching out for connection throughout the day.

_How was the castle? Do they still have that lovely beech tree in the garden?_

_Much rather be with you this afternoon than completing performance reviews._

_Sandy has, of course, gotten his forms in three days ahead of time._

_How am I supposed to evaluate Sarayah when she's only been with us for a week?_

_I don't even have your cooking to look forward to at the end of the day._

_It'll be takeaway again._

_I know, I know. I should be cooking._

_I just ...miss you._

**_Miss you too, love._** Duncan replies. **_Less than a week now._ **

**_There are leftover empanadas in the freezer. They paired well with that porter from Arran._ **

He's already looking forward to collecting Jimmy at the airport in Aberdeen. To taking him back to the hotel. To kissing him in the elevator, to crowding him onto the bed, to undressing him and relearning the shape of him skin to skin. He shifts on the bed, feeling his body wake up to possibilities he doesn't have time for if he wants to eat something too.

**_I sent a message to Shelley. What would you think about meeting her with me in Aberdeen?_ **

With the reminder of Jimmy in his life wrapped around him as comfort and protection, Duncan taps through to the Facebook app and opens Shelley's reply.

_Oh my God, Duncan!!_

_And here I thought we were just going to continue on pretending I wasn't following you and you weren't liking every public photo on my page. You great pillock._

He can feel her glare through the screen, but also can't help smiling in relief. If she'd truly written him off she wouldn't be angry.

_OF COURSE I want to see you! And Jimmy!! I'll be in Aberdeen to see a specialist on the 16th actually (just routine; you may have seen I was diagnosed with M.S. three years ago?). We could meet for a coffee? Or a drink?_

_I'll be at the Infirmary, in Foresterhill, but could meet you just about anywhere. I mean, I'll have the car and all. Where will you be?_

_Send us a picture of your Cassie? I'd like to boys to know they have a cousin. You know, one their mum might actually let them meet before they're old enough to decide for themselves, right?_

_I’m so glad you got in touch!!_

_< 3 <3 <3 Shelley_

Duncan rereads the message three times, feeling a bit lightheaded from relief and the strangeness of it all. It feels ...normal. The sort of exchange he might have with one of his friends. Planning drinks with a mate who's in the same city for a day of two. He also doesn't miss that, apparently, Shelley's estranged from their parents and brothers herself (and that at least one additional family member is still alive).

There's time to ask questions about all of that, with Jimmy sitting beside him. In the meantime, he opens the folder of photos on his mobile and scrolls through them searching for a good, recent picture of Cassie. He finds what he's looking for in a cluster of snaps he'd taken -- and then Cassie had taken -- when the three of them had gone out for her birthday that past June. He sends one of Jimmy and Cassie, leaning shoulder to shoulder behind Cassie's birthday tiramisu, then one in selfie mode Cassie had taken of herself and Duncan, leaning over his shoulder with her arm outstretched before them. Then he digs through his texts from Cassie to find one of her and Edison.

**_Here's the kiddo with her dad and me._ **

**_And one with Edison._ **

**_A drink sounds good. Know the Butchers Arms on George St.?_ **

As he is sending the final line, a notification pops up from Jimmy: _Of course I'll be there._

It feels good to be an _of course_ in someone's life. He knows that he and Jimmy have been that for each other now much long than they've been lovers. But to have the both together is sweeter still.

He begins texting back and then hits the call button instead. Jimmy must still have his mobile out because he picks up between the first and second ring.

"Duncan," Jimmy says, by way of greeting, and Duncan lets himself sink into the sounds of his own name said in an already-beloved voice newly tinged with pleasure.

"Jimmy." He echoes back, shifting his shoulders against the pillows.

"You talked to Shelley?" Duncan can hear Sandy's voice in the background, and an unfamiliar female voice that must be Sarayah, whom Duncan has yet to meet. Of course; Jimmy is still at work.

"I talked to Shelley," he affirms. "Well, exchanged messages on Facebook. She told me I was a pillock for not writing before now."

"So going well, then," Jimmy says gravely. Duncan imagines the laughter in his eyes and smiles.

"She asked for pictures she could show to the kids; I'm the fuck-up uncle they might actually get to meet someday, it seems." Though he assumes he’ll be vetted first. Hence drinks and dinner. "We're meeting her on the 16th."

"Are you okay?"

Duncan pushes his sleep-tangled hair off his forehead and stares up at the ceiling, considering the question because he knows Jimmy wants the actual answer.

"...I don't know," he says finally. There's a crack in the paint above him and he lets his eyes trace it back to the corner by the window, where the pale pink paint is showing signs of a water leak. "Relieved. Sad. Angry. Bloody terrified. Family doesn't get easier just because you get older, does it?"

"What can I do." Jimmy responds, always wanting to help.

"Love," Duncan says. He isn't sure how to put into words the fact that he wouldn't be doing this at all if he didn't have Jimmy at his back. "You already are."


	11. reunion in aberdeen, part one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy could have made his way to their hotel on his own, of course. But Duncan goes to meet him at the airport all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah, I've been sitting on the rough draft of this through a couple of time-starved months. Looking forward to getting back into fanfic headspace over the holidays. Parts two and three of this sequence should be up by Sunday at the latest. Just doing some final polishing.

Jimmy could have made his way to their hotel on his own, of course. But Duncan goes to meet him at the airport all the same. He returns the rental car -- he's spent enough time on the road in the past three weeks -- and then makes his way to the arrivals area. He's already had breakfast and a coffee at Books and Beans, one of his favorite cafes in Aberdeen, but he gets a second coffee at the kiosk opposite where the incoming passengers are routed to the baggage claim.

Jimmy has been sweetly anxious about joining Duncan in Aberdeen, as if they've never been on holiday together before. His nerves have made Duncan a bit anxious himself; with physical distance neither of them have access to the non-verbal ways to reassure one another -- a kiss, a touch, a smile. As he waits for Jimmy's plane to arrive Duncan has to consciously stop his knee from bouncing up and down; a once habitual tic he's almost entirely lost but which returns in moments of stress.

Trying to distract himself, Duncan flicks absently through apps on his phone. He and Shelley have messaged a bit since making plans to meet. He scrolls back over the message log, thinking again about how strange it is to have her back in his life, however tentatively. In the year since she had first reached out, he realizes, he had almost convinced himself her Facebook is an elaborate fantasy brought into existence by his hope that she is well and thriving. So it's uncanny to be interacting, to send a message and have her actually write _back_.

He's learned that she and Liam have been together for nine years, and were married shortly after Zachary was born. They had met while Liam was getting his forestry degree and working at Primark to pay his school fees. Shelley had been a floor manager at the same shop. _I like the way he listened to me,_ she'd said. _Here's a big bloke, student at the uni, got not reason to let me boss him around right? But he always took me seriously and I never had to show him something twice. And maybe it's daft, but the babies always liked him. There's always babies fussing in a store like that and he'd do no more than look at them sideways and they'd break out into smiles. Every last one. That's when I knew, right?_

Duncan thinks back to a winter evening shortly after Fran and Jimmy had begun dating. Consciously, Duncan had trusted Fran; she would have dropped any man who didn't care for Cassie without a second thought. But there was a difference between trusting Fran and trusting Jimmy. And it was a distinction he hadn't understood properly until the first time Cassie had pitched a fit over being denied a second ice cream and Jimmy had been the one to scoop her up and soothe her. Only when it _didn't_ happen had Duncan realized his muscles were tensed, ready to leap up and intervene before Jimmy dared raise a hand to her in anger.

It's comforting, in a weird way, to think that Shelley might know that instinct, and know exactly why he felt it.

In return for her own stories, he's begun to share bits and pieces of his own life since leaving Dundee. What it's like to travel so frequently, and some of the more memorable places he's been. How he met Fran and how they lost her; Cassie's childhood; the quiet joy of composing an unexpected life with Jimmy.

Neither he nor Shelley have broached the subject of the family they've both left behind. Duncan senses that Shelley is waiting for confirmation of something, though he isn't quite sure of what.

The flight from Lerwick is announced over the static-blurred public address system just as Jimmy's text slides across his screen: _back on the ground! see you soon._ Duncan sucks down the last of his latte while he waits for Jimmy to appear -- which he does without too long a wait, amidst the brief flood of passengers down the hall towards where Duncan stands slouched against a wall. Jimmy’s in a worn pair jeans and one of his mum's hand-knit jumpers, clean shaven but with his hair spiked at odd angles as if he slept on the plane. He's carrying his worn navy blue hold-all over one shoulder and has his mobile out in his other hand, checking something on the screen. When he lifts his head and sees Duncan his face lights up with a smile.

Duncan feels a rush of affection shot through with desire. He drops his empty paper cup in the rubbish bin to his left and pushes off the wall.

"Welcome to Aberdeen," he says with a grin as Jimmy approaches.

"Glad to be here," Jimmy says with an answering smile. He stops just short of Duncan and visibly hesitates as he tries to decide whether he can reach out and touch. Duncan decides for him, leaning in and up just enough for a soft promise of a kiss.

Duncan had returned to his hotel room the night before -- or, more precisely, early that morning -- following a farewell supper with the McCraigs. Stripping off his clothes and sliding into the lonely bed Duncan had, briefly, considered an orgasm fueled by thoughts of Jimmy's imminent arrival. His mind had definitely been on board but the rest of his body had had other ideas and he'd drifted off to sleep with a hand cradling the familiar, soft warmth between his legs: a light pressure and nothing more.

This morning, though, -- following a solid six hours of sleep and four shots of espresso -- his body was definitely on board with the deferred agenda. Jimmy tastes of coffee, too, and smells of shampoo, and aftershave, and home. Duncan slides his cheek across Jimmy's jaw in order to press his nose against the neglected spot just behind Jimmy's ear. " _Mmm_." He lets the sound be just the barest of vibrations against Jimmy's throat. Feels the one hand Jimmy has settled at Duncan's waist clutch in response: fingers digging into the spare flesh of Duncan's hip. "Would you hate me if all we did today was return to the hotel?" Jimmy's already pulling him closer, sliding a hand around to the small of his back.

It shouldn't surprise Duncan, how open Jimmy is with his affection. He remembers this from his years as the observer: Jimmy pulling Fran into his lap, Jimmy nuzzling kisses into her hair, Jimmy pressing his lips to the back of Fran's neck as he passed her in the kitchen, Jimmy's hands reaching, caressing, holding. But it's different, two men in public like this. And Duncan knows they both understand that reality on a visceral level: the glares, the muttered words, the risk of drunken aggression, or more violent forms of hatred. He's never _not_ aware of that possibility and he assumes Jimmy isn't either. But still, Jimmy reels him in, the two of them standing right there in the middle of the Aberdeen airport, other travelers eddying around them. Duncan leans with Jimmy's encouraging hands, his own arms sliding around Jimmy's waist to the extent the hold-all will allow.

"That sounds like the best idea I've heard all day," Jimmy says. Duncan arches an eyebrow, pulling back from Jimmy enough that his face comes into focus. "That's not saying much; it's  just half ten." Jimmy snorts and dips his head for another kiss.


	12. reunion in aberdeen, part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is only one bed, which had felt ridiculously important when Duncan booked the room.

They catch a cab back to the city center rather than waiting for a bus. The hotel Duncan had booked them into is a narrow, triangular building at the intersection of two narrow, ancient side streets. Duncan has stayed here before. He likes its shabby but tidy interior; he's often one of the youngest guests in the lobby. The lift is a creaky affair, no bigger than a closet with a door to match -- complete with an actual doorknob. Every time he checks in and takes the lift up to his room Duncan imagines  _ this _ is the time he'll get stuck and have to call down to the desk for assistance.

Midday on a Thursday in August they have the the lift to themselves. Duncan presses the button for 3 and the machinery lurches into motion. As they rise, Jimmy catches Duncan by the belt loops of his jeans and pulls him in for a soft press of lips, a lick of his tongue.

"I would never have guessed you enjoyed seduction between floors," Duncan murmurs with a smile, letting himself fall against Jimmy's chest, palm smacking the wood paneling behind Jimmy's shoulder. He will never, ever grow tired of Jimmy made bold by desire.

"Missed you," Jimmy replies, as if Duncan has spoken aloud.

"Missed you too," Duncan says, pressing a kiss to Jimmy's cheek as the lift shudders to a halt. He steps back from Jimmy, with a dragging reluctance, to push open the door. "Shall we do something about that?" He gestures Jimmy through.

When he first suggested Jimmy join him for a holiday, Duncan more than half expected Jimmy to find excuses not to accept the offer. He's a reluctant traveler: uneasy in new environments, slow to relax, worried about the responsibilities he's left behind. Yet this initial caution, Duncan knows, can be transmuted under the right conditions into a joyful openness to the people and places they explore together. Duncan had discovered this in the early years of co-parenting, when his efforts to find activities that would appeal to Cassie had accidentally introduced him to Jimmy's ability to relax into the experience if you convinced him (or gently tricked him) into releasing the weight of the world for an hour, an afternoon, a long weekend. Convincing Jimmy he's doing something for the pleasure of others is one approach; interspersing new delights between islands of familiarity is another. Maybe, Duncan thinks with a satisfied smile as he unlocks the door to their room, maybe sex will be another.

The door  _ snicks  _ open in response to his keycard and Duncan pushes open the door into the room. The light coming in past the heavy hotel drapes is muted, like the light of an incoming storm. The cleaning staff has been and gone in Duncan's absence and the bed is made, the washroom tidied and replenished with the single-use bottles of shampoo and conditioner and wrapped bars of French-milled soap, fresh towels folded neatly on the rack. There is only one bed, which had felt ridiculously important when Duncan booked the room. They could have ignored a second double, of course, but reserving a single with an en suite had felt like writing WE ARE VERY VERY GAY on the reservation form when he had checked in the evening before and asked for a second key.

Duncan remembers the first time he and another lad -- a Canadian fiddler he still runs into on occasion, now with a journalist husband and two toddlers in tow -- had checked into a hotel overnight. It had been a frigid January weekend in Edmonton. Duncan had spent a considerable portion of the evening trembling: first from the cold, then from nerves, and finally from relief when they had closed and triple locked the door, drawn the curtains, and fallen into bed. It had been the first time in his life that sex with another person was free of the anxiety that someone might open a door or come around a corner at just the wrong moment. The first time he’d felt properly safe in the privacy of a space he and his partner could control.

He almost wants the opposite now: To open the curtains and let in the light without a care who might catch a glimpse from the office buildings across the street. He shivers at the fleeting fantasy and turns just as Jimmy drops his hold-all on top of the dresser.

"Cold?" Jimmy must have seen the shudder, however slight. He takes a step or two across the room, hands rising as if to wrap a non-existent muffler around Duncan's neck. Duncan smiles and shakes his head.

"Just glad you're here."

Jimmy closes the space left between them and Duncan sighs against Jimmy's palms. He leans in as Jimmy’s warm hands slide up over his shoulders, pulling him close. How can Duncan have missed this so much already? They've been apart almost as many days as Jimmy has been touching him in this newly proprietary way. But he's  _ missed _ Jimmy. Missed having Jimmy's hands to pull him in, Jimmy’s warm fingers at the back of his neck, bringing their mouths together for gentle, lingering kisses.

After a few moments of gentleness Duncan nips at Jimmy's lower lip, licks along the curl as Jimmy smiles, then does it again. Jimmy slides his palms down to the small of Duncan's back, fitting them flush together;  Duncan fists his own hands at Jimmy's belt, then pushes a few centimeters higher, fingertips scraping up underneath the t-shirt and sweater Jimmy is still wearing.

"Something you had in mind?" Jimmy teases, a ragged note creeping into his voice.

"Mmm." Duncan leans back and pretends to consider with narrowed eyes. "You, but more naked."

"I'm not at all naked right now," Jimmy grins, angling in for another kiss. Duncan allows him to take liberties as he fumbles with Jimmy's belt buckle.

"I'm working on it," he grunts into Jimmy's kiss a nd Jimmy laughs, softly breathless, and pulls his hands back from Duncan so he can yank at the hem of his own sweater. He pulls it up over his head in an entirely utilitarian motion that narrowly misses Duncan's nose. The friction of wool on cotton rucks up Jimmy's t-shirt just long enough to expose his soft pink-brown nipples and before the fabric drops down again Duncan leans in to press his mouth against the nearest one: Clean sweat, the rise of the nipple in response to his lips, the tickle of sandy hair against his nose.

Jimmy pushes into the touch with a hum of approval, dropping his now-empty hands to Duncan's shoulders and digging his fingers in, sharp and good. Duncan feels more than hears the next sound as he tongues the nipple hard then nips with his teeth. It's a vibration against his lips and nose, one that he chases to the next nipple before dragging his hands up Jimmy's flank and pulling back to tug the t-shirt off as well. He bites Jimmy's shoulder, intending to bruise, as Jimmy reaches to divest Duncan of his own worn flannel and the black t-shirt beneath it. Jimmy grunts at the press of Duncan's teeth, a satisfied sound, and angles his neck to let Duncan suck his fill before Jimmy can yank the layers of cloth over Duncan’s head and toss them aside.

Now that they're both bare skin to the waist, Jimmy's belt buckle and zip undone, fly open, his hands fumbling with the button of Duncan's trousers, Duncan tugs Jimmy one shuffling footstep at a time across the floor to the bed. The backs of his own knees make first contact with the mattress and the cheap, floral bedspread. He shimmies with the motion of Jimmy's hands and lets Jimmy push his jeans and then pants down. They have the entire holiday to turn undressing into seduction; right now Duncan just wants the skin-to-skin contact he's been hungering for. And wants it  _ now _ .

"Lift up for me, love," Jimmy murmurs, following Duncan's trousers to the scratchy hotel carpet so he can pull off Duncan's slip-on trainers and then his worn socks with the holes in the heels. He crouches there, for a moment, then, his gaze traveling back up Duncan's body until their eyes meet. They're both breathing too shallowly, almost panting, Duncan lets his eyes reverse the path of Jimmy's gaze, tracing down across Jimmy's kiss-stained lips, past the blooming hickey at the base of his throat, across the nipples that, yeah, Duncan definitely plans on seeing pierced, down the trail of pale blond hair of Jimmy's belly to the V of his open zip, the fullness there beneath thin cotton briefs.

Duncan licks his lips, gaze sliding back up to Jimmy's face as he reaches forward to drag Jimmy up onto the bed. "You're still too dressed," he complains against Jimmy's mouth as he lets Jimmy's weight push him roughly back against the mattress. He reaches for the waistband of Jimmy's jeans and briefs to push at them, mostly ineffectually, as Jimmy kneels between his knees. They're half wrestling, half working together as they move up the bed until Duncan sprawls against the pillows. Duncan lets his head fall back and surveys Jimmy breathless, laughing, smiling above him. It’s a beautiful sight, maybe an even more beautiful sensation as Jimmy's still-clothed knees press up against Duncan’s arse, the cloth rough and decadent against bare flesh, the width and weight of Jimmy's hips pushing Duncan's thighs apart as he leans forward between Duncan’s knees, stealing kisses, teasing and distracting as Duncan scrabbles at his remaining clothes trying to remove the offending layers.

Once Duncan can get no further without some re-arrangement of limbs, Jimmy lowers himself to press Duncan back against the pillows with a kiss, then another, as he shifts between Duncan's splayed legs and manages to wriggle free from the remaining garments without breaking contact. Duncan lets him do the work without protest, luxuriating at the expanse of bare skin at his disposal: he spreads his hands and slides his palms up Jimmy's arms to his shoulders, down his chest, up his sides, down his back to his now-naked arse. Once there, he hooks his hands at the backs of Jimmy's thighs and encourages him to bring his bare knees up to either side of Duncan's narrow hips, his weight settling against the tops of Duncan's thighs just where he likes to be held. Duncan sighs happily, perhaps a touch louder than he might in solitude, so that Jimmy can hear just how glad Duncan is to be pinned beneath him.

Jimmy folds in against Duncan with a sigh of his own, face pressed to the crook of Duncan's neck, breath warm and humid where Duncan sinks into the pillows. With his weight on his forearms and knees he leaves Duncan enclosed but with his arms free. And as they breathe together Duncan repeats his earlier strokes: palms up Jimmy's arms, over his shoulders, down his back. Up the soft, vulnerable flesh of his sides and down again. Duncan turns his face just enough to press a kiss against the curl of Jimmy’s ear. Outside their hotel room the midday world is muted and distant. The  _ beep beep beep  _ of a lorry backing up in the street below, the murmur of conversation as another pair of guests make their way down the hall, then the slam of a door. Somewhere above them another guest turns on a tap and water rattles up the pipes in the wall behind the headboard. Duncan closes his eyes and listens to their shared breath for another handful of moments. Then another. 

They have  _time_. 

Before his body can shift from relaxed to drowsy -- reunited with Jimmy he realizes how much he hasn’t slept in the past twenty days -- Duncan makes a slightly awkward twist of a wrist and pushes between them and takes Jimmy, full and heavy, in his hand. A caress, tightening pressure, and he can feel Jimmy's body jerk hot against his palm. He arches up against the back of his own wrist, his body reacting as if it’s his own dick he has a grip on, everything feeling tight and hot and restless with the need for _more_. Wordlessly, Jimmy shudders over him, his knees sliding ever-so-slightly apart as he sinks into Duncan’s touch. Duncan releases him, them, pushes further down to catch and cradle Jimmy's balls. Another shudder, and a whine of pleasure and frustration from Jimmy that pulls a ghosting laugh from Duncan. That he can do  _ this  _ for the man he loves. He reaches further and his fingertips brush something ...something unexpected.

He pauses.


	13. reunion in aberdeen, part three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy's stillness tells him, even as Duncan opens his mouth to ask, that he hasn't imagined the curve of silicone just _there_.

Jimmy's stillness tells him, even as Duncan opens his mouth to ask, that he hasn't imagined the curve of silicone just _there_. A cold-hot rush of arousal ripples through him at the thought that Jimmy had ... he reaches again to confirm, with a solitary finger, and traces the flared base of the plug. Now that he's thinking about it, he can feel the artificial slick of the lube, can feel Jimmy trembling faintly against him, around him, the clench of muscle as he pushes back against Duncan's exploratory touch.

"Bloody hell." Duncan mutters into Jimmy’s hair. "How did you manage to get through security with a --" he swallows. "-- wearing _this_?"

Jimmy rocks back once more, his face hot against Duncan's neck as he presses unintelligible words into the curve of Duncan’s throat. Duncan, fascinated, traces the toy once more. Again, Jimmy pushes back into his hand. He’s dragging himself back and forth over Duncan’s own hard-on in an exquisitely-not-enough sort of way that Duncan would be pissed about if he weren’t so distracted by the discovery of what Jimmy’s been carrying for him, tucked away for just the two of them to know.  


"What was that love?" He wants to hear Jimmy tell him. He wants to be able to imagine.  


"I said I put it in _after_ the checkpoint," Jimmy lifts his head just enough to raise an eyebrow, the expression a most peculiar combination of lust and laughter and exasperation. Jimmy in love is Jimmy a wee bit reckless, Duncan thinks again, heaven help him. Duncan's mouth is suddenly dry from the image of Jimmy in an airport toilet, slicking the toy with lube and pushing it in ... and leaving it there.

His skin prickles again at the thought, and he grips Jimmy’s hip with his free hand, fingers digging hard enough to bruise. Jimmy grunts with pleasure and nuzzles back into the crook of Duncan’s neck. “You’re daft,” Duncan whispers, making it an endearment as he slides his hand back up Jimmy’s spine to the nape of his neck, and then back down to his tailbone, just above where Jimmy wants him to be. He can feel the heat of Jimmy's not-exactly-embarrassment against his own cheek, chest, even as Jimmy is rocking against Duncan's hand and wrist, uncoordinated hunger, their mutual arousal making the tiniest movement too much and not remotely enough. Duncan can't -- doesn't try -- to stop his own hips canting upward, doesn’t hold himself back from shoving their bodies closer, _closer_. With each stutter of coming together, pulling back, then coming together again his fingers slide over the smooth silicone, teasing, pushing it deeper, holding it in place even as Jimmy’s body threatens to evict it.

The last time they had done this, nearly this, had been in their own bedroom: his fingers curled two knuckles deep in the heat of Jimmy's body, lube everywhere as Jimmy pulled him further in with little satisfied, effortful noises, wordlessly demanding more. Once again, Duncan feels a wondrous gratitude that Jimmy trusts him enough to be bold.

"Want something, do you?" It’s Duncan's turn to ask as Jimmy moves against him, pushy and pleading. Duncan knows what Jimmy wants but still hungers for the words.

"Please," Jimmy manages. "Inside me, please." They haven't, yet, despite the fact Jimmy's asked Duncan to fuck him. One of his first requests, in fact, a detail Duncan hasn’t forgotten. They’ve been too absorbed in discovering all of the other ways to be together. That, and it hasn’t been at the top of Duncan's list of pleasures in the past. It can feel -- especially with other men -- like a lot of responsibility. An act either loved or hated without a lot between. An act around which _meaning_ often developed, whether or not the participants wanted it to.

But this is Jimmy. And Duncan knows meaning is already a given with anything they do. Knows that this particular arrangement of bodies will carry no more weight than any other apart from the fact that it brings Jimmy pleasure. And that he feels safe enough to trust Duncan with an act Duncan is pretty sure only Fran has been entrusted with before.

Duncan trembles finely beneath Jimmy, tracing his fingertips back and forth across the base of the plug that rides flush against puckered muscle. He feels his own body clench in response -- because, yeah, he knows how good it can feel to be stretched open and filled. Because he’s had this particular plug up his own arse in the past and that makes Jimmy’s use of it all the more intimate. He feels his own dick thick and heavy against his wrist, trapped between their bellies, along the stiff line of Jimmy's erection. He closes his eyes and imagines pushing inside, filling Jimmy, feeling him hot and slicked up, welcoming Duncan's presence, wanting to be slightly overwhelmed by the pressure and almost-pain as their bodies fit together.

He turns his head for a kiss, messy and awkward at this angle, and extricates his hand from between their sweaty bodies. "Condoms. Lube," he manages a few essential nouns. "Drawer to your right." Jimmy returns the kisses and for a few moments it’s a tangle of limbs and soft laughter as Jimmy reaches for the drawer in the bedside table and nearly over-balances his way off the bed entirely.

"Do you want--?" Duncan asks as Jimmy settles back over Duncan's thighs, supplies in hand.

Jimmy answers with his empty palm on Duncan's chest, gentle but firm. "Right there," he says. "I want you right there." And then he slides the hand down to put an equally gentle but firm hold on Duncan’s erection.

Duncan licks his lips and waits, panting against the need to move, acutely aware of his own pulse against Jimmy's palm, resisting the urge to thrust up into Jimmy's hand and then realizing he has no reason to resist and doing it once, twice, his eyes on Jimmy’s face. Jimmy sucks in a shaking breath as he settles his weight back against Duncan's thighs and returns Duncan’s gaze. "Not just yet, love," he says. "Wait for me, aye?”

Duncan takes a breath in answer, doing his best to quiet his body and wait.. There's the condom to unwrap, to roll on -- Jimmy isn't exactly teasing but the touch makes him want to arch up into the touch all the same -- the spreading of lube everywhere. Jimmy reaches down behind himself to pull the plug free with a grimace, tossing it away. Duncan trembles again at the idea of Jimmy on that airplane, in the taxicab, on the elevator: conscious at every moment of being filled. Of his desire for Duncan to be there, instead, held deep inside: beloved, possessed, protected.

Duncan closes his eyes, then opens them, then closes them. Torn between wanting to see Jimmy's face and needing to focus on how Jimmy feels without distraction. He digs his fingers in to the flesh of Jimmy's thighs as Jimmy settles himself slowly, slowly, heat and muscle rippling around Duncan's cock, the heavy slick of lube, the scentless scent of it sliding into his nose alongside the tang and musk of sweat and pleasure. He hauls in a breathe, not quite a gasp, not quite a groan, and lifts his hips up to meet Jimmy's descent.

He hasn't done this in more months than he cares to count with Jimmy panting in concentration above him, fierce and wanting and forcing himself to move slowly and relax his muscles with every exhalation. The last bloke Duncan had been with preferred fucking to being fucked and Duncan had been in the right mood to oblige the time or two they'd gotten that technical. It had been over well before he moved in with Jimmy, long enough for the bodily memory of what this actually _feels_ like, as a physical act, to fade beneath his skin and now shock him anew with the immediacy of grappling two adult bodies into interlocking, sweaty intimacy.

He lifts his hips again -- the little he can beneath Jimmy’s weight -- and Jimmy growls his approval, a sound that contains no coherent words but speaks directly to the coil of pleasure in Duncan's core. He thrusts again, as if daring Jimmy to do something to stop him. Jimmy leans down as Duncan lifts and they're kissing again, messy and hard, distraction from and application of all of the other ways their bodies are coming together. Jimmy pushes his tongue into Duncan’s mouth and Duncan thinks hazily that now they're fucking each other.

"Christ, I --" Jimmy gasps, between kisses. "Fuck, I've wanted --"

"So good," Duncan says, going for simple and direct. "You feel so good. _God_."

They find a brief rhythm against the cheap sheets. Duncan twists his fists into the cotton polyester blend and inhales the scent of Jimmy and his own want in the humid air between them. He feels the ever-tightening knot of arousal, close to where their bodies join, and curls his toes into the mattress as if he might fist those as well.

Jimmy is panting and growling and sure over him, moving with the readiness of a man who's been thinking about this, about Duncan, about their bodies coming together like this since he pressed the plug inside himself in the loo back in Lerwick, since he packed the plug in his luggage at all, since Duncan had first pressed the toy into his accepting palm -- had it been less than a month ago? And then Duncan's coming hard, everything seizing with agonizing pleasure and release. Jimmy is urging him on with a stream of soft, urgent almost-words that tell Duncan everything he needs to know about how much Jimmy has missed him, missed this closeness, while they were apart.

Duncan has just enough languid sense left after the orgasm has worked its way out to the tips of his toes and fingers and the top of his scalp to pull his hands free from the bedclothes and push them up Jimmy's still-tense thighs to his hips, where he digs his thumbs into the groove of Jimmy's hips and drags his eyes up from Jimmy's dick, flushed and fill, to his face -- almost equally flushed, lips slightly parted as Jimmy returns his gaze with a slightly glazed expression. Duncan imagines how his orgasm must have felt to Jimmy from the inside out and his body clenches weakly: wrung out but still responsive to the idea. They'll definitely have to repeat the act soon but with that flushed, leaking cock in Duncan's body: pushing, filling, intrusive, almost overwhelming and so, so good. He shivers again, and Jimmy still hasn't moved or looked away from whatever Duncan's face is showing him.

"What --" Duncan's voice comes out rough, as if he's been coughing. He drags his wrist across his lips and he clears his throat. "What now?" He asks because it feels like Jimmy came here with a plan, and Duncan's ready to accept whatever Jimmy's been thinking about as he touched himself these past two weeks and thought of Duncan.

Jimmy eases off Duncan's body with a sigh that might be relief or regret although Duncan suspects (hopes) that it's a bit of both. He feels the chill of leaving Jimmy's body even through the condom and shivers at the lost warmth and physical connection, even though they're still touching in half a dozen places. He digs his fingers in tighter, as if Jimmy might float away. Jimmy must see something in his face because he leans down and presses a kiss to Duncan's lips.

The motion presses Jimmy's erection against Duncan's belly again, and Duncan feels the sharp inhalation, an impatient sound that Jimmy does nothing to disguise as he rolls gracelessly to one side. He's stays with Duncan's lips and tongue even as he moves -- the salt of his exertion against Duncan's mouth -- and stretches out against Duncan's flank. Duncan can just about manage to roll toward him.

"Hands. Please, I want --" Jimmy skims an eager hand over Duncan’s chest, then down his arm to his wrist, tugging him closer and pressing Duncan's palm to his own dick as if Duncan might need direction. "Just ...touch me?"

"You need to ask?" Duncan admonishes, letting his grip be moulded to Jimmy's already familiar and beautiful length. He drags his fingertips from balls to tip, feeling Jimmy's body leap at the stroke, slides his thumb over the swollen, leaking tip, then reverses the motion. He feels Jimmy's abdomen tremble -- it won't be long now -- and Duncan closes his eyes so he can pay attention to touch and sound and think about the way Jimmy must still feel fucked open and empty, sticky with lube and maybe burning a little in the best possible way.

He leans in against Jimmy with a groan of sympathetic arousal his body has no way to act on, not right now, maybe not again today, and almost as if the sound of Duncan's voice tips him over the edge Jimmy digs his fingers into Duncan's upper arm in warning -- there will be bruises there, too, Duncan thinks with satisfaction -- and spills between them into Duncan’s relentless hand.

"Well," Duncan murmurs, teasing, after a minute or two of peaceful silence broken only by their slowing, steady breathing. "If this is my reward for going on business trips I'll have to plan an aggressive touring schedule." He tracing slow circles through the light dusting of hair on Jimmy’s chest.

Jimmy lets out a huff of a laugh, his lips brushing Duncan's forehead as he turns his head on the pillow. "You don't have to go anywhere for me to want you like this."

Duncan doesn't have any ready patter to toss back in return so he just allows himself to sink even closer against Jimmy's side as he watches his palm move across the contours of Jimmy's body at rest.  Just at the moment, there's absolutely nowhere else he'd rather be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be switching to some different fic projects for the next two weeks as I participate in / coordinate the [4th Annual Twelvetide Drabbles Challenge](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/TwelvetideDrabbles2018)! If you are a writer or artist as well as a reader, consider joining us to help raise money for refugee assistance. And one of my drabble series for the challenge is going to be a Rhona/Phyllis selkie AU ;-).

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Neal Stephenson's _The System of the World_ : "Starting friendships, like opening up new overseas trade routes, was a mad venture best left to the young" (p. 22).
> 
> My apologies for second-guessing my own memory of Edison's home country and changing the correct references from Portuguese to Spanish. They have been revised back again. Thank you to my interlocutors for pointing out my mistake. <3


End file.
